Constantin Lipsius

Johannes Wilhelm Constantin Lipsius (20 October 1832 – 11 April 1894) was a German architect and architectural theorist, best known for his controversial design of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Exhibition Building (1883–1894) on the Brühl Terrace in Dresden, today known as the Lipsius-Bau.

Beginning in the 1860s, Lipsius participated in a number of regional and national architectural competitions while he continued to broaden his practice with residential commissions and preservation work.

Lipsius's winning entry for the reconstruction of Leipzig's Johannis Hospital garnered him professional recognition as königliche Baurat, or "royal architectural counsellor."

Also in the late 1870s, Lipsius began his professional association with architect August Hartel (1844–1890), which included designing the Peterskirche (Leipzig), the Johanneskirche (Gera) and an entry in the second Reichstag competition of 1882.

He received the commission to rebuild the Academy complex shortly after assuming his new academic post and it soon became a hotly contested project that was covered in the national trade journals.

Shortly after the Academy complex was completed, it was regarded as a grotesque, over-ornamented monstrosity, and architectural realism had already moved on to become a more strident theoretical stance in the work of Otto Wagner.

After his death, Lipsius was succeeded as Professor of Architecture at the Academy by Paul Wallot, architect of the newly completed German Reichstag (Berlin, 1882–1894).