Hans Otswald (he added John after he settled in the United States) was born in Berlin on July 3, 1913. Shortly after the First World War, the Ostwalds moved to the Berlin suburb of Dahiem, into a house built for them by well-known architect, Paul Imberg, a friend of the family. Ostwald, who lived there until he was twelve years old, later called it the worst-designed house he ever saw In 1925 the family moved to Vienna, where his father became a senior partner in a private bank. Ostwald studied piano achieving an unusually high level of competence.

After graduating from high school in 1931, he studied law at the University of Vienna, while working as a trainee under his father who wanted him to become a banker. He attended the London School of Economics for a term and continued his training at a London bank, but the advent of National Socialism made it clear that a financial career no longer held reasonable prospects. Ideally, he would have liked to have been an artist but economic realities suggested the compromise of becoming an architect. In 1933 he returned from London to Austria and enrolled at the Institute of Technology in Vienna while completing work for the first law examination, which he passed in 1934. The same year he moved to Switzerland, where he continued his architectural studies at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. In 1938, he received the architect's diploma, and the following year the degree of Doctor in Technical Sciences. His doctoral dissertation— Otto Wagner: Ein Beitrag zum Verstandnis seines baukunstlerischen Schaffens was published in 1948. For a short time, 1938-1939, Ostwald worked in the office of Moser in Zurich.

In 1936 he married Rosemarie Bernfeld who was completing her doctorate in chemistry at the University of Zurich eventually becoming professor of Nutritional Sciences at the University of California in Berkeley. A few weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, Ostwald and his wife joined family members in San Francisco, where he was hired by Richard Neutra to work on the Kahn residence in San Francisco. In 1940 Ostwald prepared drawings in the office of Reiners and Garren of San Francisco, and in 1941, while associated with Anshen and Allen, he designed the Ralph K. Davies house in Woodside. During the war Ostwald was employed in the Northern California office of Standard Oil to design refinery buildings in Alaska and Saudi Arabia. Settling in Berkeley in 1944 Ostwald went into practice on his own.

From 1947 to 1953, he partnered with Frederick Confer in Oakland and continued his extensive residential practice. Ostwald believed that the house should be fitted to the personality and style of its occupants as well as to the nature of its environment. In 1954 Ostwald returned to his own residential practice although during this period he designed the South Branch Berkeley Library in 1961 and the Bancroft Center in 1964. In 1965 he entered into partnership with E. Paul Kelly, a young Berkeley architect who had worked with him some time earlier while training at the University of California at Berkeley. From 1958 to 1962 he taught in the University of California Extension program, and in 1967-68 at the College of Environmental Design of the University of California at Berkeley. In 1972, he went as a visiting professor to the Haile Selassi I University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. While there he developed programs for Ethiopian architectural students, designed some private homes and drew plans for the reorganization and remodeling of the Kennedy Library of the Haile Selassi I University and some of its branches.

Ostwald was a member of the Sierra Club and beginning in the early 1960s, participated more directly in local affairs connected with architecture, planning, and design including the Code Review Committee, the Civic Art Commission, Design Review Committee, the Civic Art Foundation, and the School Master Plan Committee. In 1971 he was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects for his achievement in design and his contribution to architecture through his work in the community. He died on May 24, 1973.

Sources:

Donald Reay & Peter Paret.

John Hans Ostwald Architect. Berkeley California: John Hans Ostwald Memorial Fund, 1975 and John Hans Ostwald CV (n.d.)