Hadassah University Medical Center, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, Interior perspective and details of furniture

Erich Mendelsohn

1936

A 1936 graphite and color-pencil drawing on tracing paper by Erich Mendelsohn that works out interior perspectives and furniture details for the Hadassah University Medical Center, sketching practical solutions for seating, circulation, and built-in fixtures.

What strikes you is the energetic, layered hand—overlapping vignette sketches and circled studies, precise measurements and German notes, and a strong vanishing‑point perspective of a waiting area at the bottom—all revealed with the translucent delicacy of tracing paper.

The sheet shows Mendelsohn’s modernist approach of integrating furniture and architecture through iterative drawing, a method that helped translate interwar functionalist ideals into humane, purpose-built hospital interiors.

Palette

Art Terms

Architectural drawing Architecture International Style Furnitureand interiors Interior design Graphite Colored pencil

Exhibitions

Eric Mendelsohn: Architectural Drawings, 1914-1929

1969

Architecture of Eric Mendelsohn, 1914–1940

1941

Bauhaus: 1919–1928

1938

Built in the U.S.A., 1932–44

1944