Berlin, Best Architecture Guide. 20 buildings in Berlin you should know

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Emil Fahrenkamp

Emil Fahrenkamp (8th of November of 1885, Aachen, German – 24th of Mai of 1966, Breitscheid, German) One of the most outstanding architects of the inter-war period, his best-known work is the Shell-Haus, built in Berlin in 1930.

He travelled to Düsseldorf in order to work in Wilhelm Kreis’s office, where he was between 1909 and 1912. He became assistant and subsequently professor in the Art Academy of Düsseldorf. His work in the 20s and 30s could be defined as the search of the simple forms, flat ceilings and repetitive window models, where features of the traditional style are integrated.

He accepted jobs from the Nazis during the war and after its end, he kept active as architect but he withdrew from the public life.

BARKOW LEIBINGER

Barkow Leibinger’s work is realized over a wide range of scales and building types including building for workplace (industry, office, and master-planning), cultural, housing, event spaces, exhibitions and installations in the public realm internationally. Important milestones are amongst others the Biosphere in Potsdam, Germany, the Customer and Administration Building , the Gate House and the Campus Restaurant in Ditzingen, Germany and the Trutec Building in Seoul. Recently completed buildings include the Tour Total office high-rise in Berlin and an apartment and hotel complex in passive house standard in Freiburg, Germany.

Their work has been shown at the Architecture Biennale Venice 2008 and 2014, at the Marrakech Biennale 2012 and is included in the permanent collections of MoMA, New York, and the Deutsches Architektur Museum, Frankfurt. Barkow Leibinger have won three National AIA Honor Awards for Architecture and the prestigious Marcus Prize for Architecture, Milwaukee, recognizing emerging talent in the field for design excellence and innovation, as well a Global Holcim Innovation Award for sustainability.

Frank Barkow. Born in Kansas City, USA, 1957. Bachelor of Architecture, Montana State University, 1982. Master of Architecture, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, 1990. Visiting Critic, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York and Rome, 1990. Unit Master, Architectural Association, London, 1995-98. The Arthur Gensler Visiting Professor of Architecture Cornell University, Ithaca, 2003. Cass Gilbert Visiting Professor, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 2004. Visiting Professor, State Academy of Art and Design, Stuttgart, Germany, 2005-06. Visiting Professor, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, USA, 2008, 04, 00. Visiting Professor, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, School of Architecture & Urban Planning, USA, 2008. Visiting Professor, EPFL Écoles Polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, 2010. Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Germany, Since 1993.

Regine Leibinger. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, 1963. Diploma, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, 1989. Master of Architecture, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, USA, 1991. Assistant Professor, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, 1993–97. Unit Master, Architectural Association, London, England, 1997–98. Guest Professor, Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, Germany, 1999–2000. Visiting Professor, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, USA, 2000, 04. Professor for Building Construction and Design, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany Since 2006. Member of the ’Visiting Committees’, MIT Department of Architecture, Cambridge, USA, Since 2011. Barkow Leibinger Architects, Berlin, Germany, Since 1993.

Richter Musikowski

Richter Musikowski is an architectural studio located in Berlin, founded in 2012 and directed by the architects Jan Musikovski and Christoph Richter.

Jan Musikovski was born in Magdeburg in 1974 and in 1994 studied architecture at the Bauhaus-Universitat in Weimar. During 1998 Musikovski also studied at Virginia Tech in Washington DC and in 2001 he obtained a Bauhaus-Universitat diploma in Weimar. After his studies he worked in different architecture studios until 2005, when he became a member of the Architektenkammer Berlin. In 2010 he started working at the architecture faculty in Dresden and in 2012 he founded Richter Musikowski together with Christoph Richter.

Christoph Richter was born in Dresden in 1982 and in 2002 began his architectural studies at the Technical University of Dresden, graduating in 2010 from the same school. In 2010 he started working at the architecture faculty in Dresden and in 2012 he founded Richter Musikowski with Jan Musikovski. In 2015 he started to be part of Architektenkammer Berlin.

Kim Herforth Nielsen. 3XN

3XN is an architecture and design company with offices in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Sydney and New York. Kim Herforth Nielsen architect MAA, is the founder, Senior Partner and Creative Director.

At 3XN they believe that buildings are more than the sum of their parts and they are constantly seeking to achieve a new synthesis of design, program and context. Their buildings are uniquely matched to each project and they always seek to combine beauty, functionality and meaning by putting people at the center of design.

Partners.- Jan Ammundsen, Architect MAA, Senior Partner, Head of Design. Jeanette Hansen, Architect MAA, Senior Partner, CEO. Kasper Guldager Jensen. Architect MAA, Senior Partner, Director of GXN. Audun Opdal, Architect MAA, Senior Partner. Fred Holt, Architect, B.Arch, M.Arch., Partner. Jack Renteria, Director of Communications and Business Development, Partner. Jens Holm, Partner, 3XN US. Marie Hesseldahl Larsen, Architect MAA, Partner. Stig Vesterager Gothelf, Architect MAA, Partner. Torben Østergaard, Architect MAA, MOL, Partner

Research and exploration is essential to their design process as it allows them to push the boundaries of both aesthetics and functionality. They see their work as a continued series of ideas with each project building on the previous, allowing them to constantly evolve and develop their perception and approach of design.

They have an open and informal work environment where teamwork and ambition are of equal value, they are dedicated to creating a positive and open workplace were they all work together to become better at what they do.

OMA. Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

Arno Brandlhuber Brandlhuber+

Brandlhuber+ is an architecture office dedicated to the idea of collaboration with other practices, disciplines, and individuals. It was founded by Arno Brandlhuber in 2006. Arno Brandlhuber works as an Architect and Urban Planner. He studied Architecture and Urbansim at the TU Darmstadt and the Accademia del Arte in Florence.

From 1992 on he initiated several project- and office partnerships. During this period numerous projects and publications were realized, including the projects Neanderthal Museum (Mettmann, 1996), Kölner Brett (Cologne, 2000), and Crystal (Copenhagen, 2006). In 2006, he founded Brandlhuber+ as an architecture office dedicated to the idea of collaboration with other practices, discplines, and individuals.

Expanding on the idea of collaboration, he started the ongoing practice of Brandlhuber+ Emde, Burlon with built projects such as Brunnenstrasse 9 (Berlin, 2009), the Antivilla (Krampnitz, 2014), and St. Agnes (Berlin, 2015); currently working on LoBe, a mixed use housing project in Berlin, and a private art collection. Furthermore he is collaborating with Muck Petzet, working on the Tacheles project; Christian Kerez & Muck Petzet working on the Spreestudios; Michalski&Wagner on projects in Sicily and Sam Chermayeff on projects in Berlin.

Arno Brandlhuber taught at several universities and colleges. From 2003 to 2017, he held the chair of architecture and urban research at the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg and directed the nomadic masters program a42.org. In 2017 Arno Brandlhuber was named professor of architecture and design at the ETH Zurich, where he teaches and researches new methods of architectural production and representation in architecture and media, through the tool of TV.  He was a guest professor at several universities including TU Vienna, Harvard Graduate School of Design and others.

Besides his building practice he is researching the transition of spatial organization and production in German history, focusing specifically on the Berlin Republic. As part of this research he put on several exhibitions and publications including „Von der Stadt der Teile zur Stadt der Teilhabe“, „The Dialogic City: Berlin wird Berlin“ and others.  

In recent years Arno Brandlhuber’s practice has been dedicated to the idea of legislation in architecture as a main factor for the built environment. This mindset resulted in ongoing investigations, both built and theoretical, such as the ARCH+ issue titled Legislating Architecture and the 2016 film Legislating Architecture, made in collaboration with director and film maker Christopher Roth.
Together they formulated the second chapter The Property Drama which premiered at he 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial. The film provoked a vivid political discussion resulting in an ARCH+ issue on the topic of property and land tenure, as well as an travelling-exhibition starting in November 2018 at the V-A-I.

His work was exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012 & 2016.

Muck Petzet Architekten

Muck Petzet Architekten. Born in Munich, 1964. Philosophy Studies LMU Munich, 1983–1984. Architecture Studies TU Munich / HdK Berlin, 1985–1991. Architect at Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, 1991–1993. Office in Munich, 1993. Meier-Scupin & Petzet. Partnership with J.P. Meier-Scupin, 1993–2003.  MSP Meier-Scupin & Petzet, Mayr, Hehenberger. Partnership with J.P: Meier-Scupin, C.Mayr und J.Hehenberger, 2000–2001. Muck Petzet Architects, Munich, 2003. Muck Petzet und Partner Architekten. Partnership with Andreas Ferstl, 2012-2015. Commissioner General of the German Pavilion 2012, 13th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. 2012. Professorship „Sustainable Design“, Università della Svizzera italiana, Accademia di architettura Mendrisio, 2014.

Teaching assignment at the Hochschule Liechtenstein, Vaduz, 2004-2005. Visiting professor at Technical University, Munich. Architecture as Resource, 2012-2013. Professorship „Sustainable Design“, Università della Svizzera italiana, Accademia di architettura Mendrisio, 2014. Board member of the german Plattenbauzentrum Leinefelde (dpzl), 2002. Board member of the German Architect Association (BDA) Munich / Upper Bavaria, 2003-2008. organisation of the BDA Award Bavaria, 1999. organisation of ′Architekturwoche A4, Zeitmaschine Architektur′ (architecture as time machine), Munich, 2008. Member of AK KOOP GDW/BDA/Deutscher Städtetag, 2011. Board member of Kunstverein Munich, 2011.

David Chipperfield

David Chipperfield was born in London in 1953 and studied architecture at the Kingston School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London before working at the practices of Douglas Stephen, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster.

In 1985 he founded David Chipperfield Architects, which today has over 300 staff at its offices in London, Berlin, Milan and Shanghai.

David Chipperfield has taught and held conferences in Europe and the United States and has received honorary degrees from the universities of Kingston and Kent.

He is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and an honorary fellow of both the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Bund Deutscher Architekten (BDA). In 2009 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and in 2010 he received a knighthood for services to architecture in the UK and Germany. In 2011 he received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture and in 2013 the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association, while in 2021 he was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in recognition of a lifetime’s work.

In 2012 he curated the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

Piet Eckert und Wim Eckert / Architekten. E2A

E2A Piet Eckert und Wim Eckert / Architekten, is an architecture firm founded by Wim Eckert and Piet Eckert in 2001.

Wim Eckert was born in 1969 in Zurich. Following his studies at the ETH Zurich (Diploma 1995, with honorable mention) he collaborated at OMA Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam from 1996 to 1997. He has been working as an independent architect since 1997 and founded E2A with Piet Eckert in 2001. Wim Eckert regularly gives lectures and workshops at universities and institutions.
 
From 2009 to 2011, Wim Eckert was a visiting Professor for Architecture and Sustainable Building (Bachelors and Masters Degrees) at the HCU HafenCity University Hamburg. Along with the teaching of architecture, the focal point of the visiting professorship was in developing a think tank which allowed for research about sustainability in relation to architecture, urban planning, the arts and engineering.

Since 2014, Wim Eckert is Guest Professor at the USI - Università dell Svizzera Italiana at Mendrisio.

Piet Eckert was born in 1968 in Mumbai (Bombay). Following his studies at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture in New York and the ETH Zurich (Diploma 1994 at the ETH Zurich, with honourable mention) he collaborated at OMA Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam from 1995 to 1997. He has been working as an independent architect since 1997 and founded E2A with Wim Eckert in 2001.
 
Piet Eckert regularly gives lectures and workshops at various Universities and Institutes. He was a visiting professor at the Delft University of Technology and faculty member at the ETH Zurich. From 2009 to 2011, Piet was a visiting Professor for Architecture and Sustainable Building (Bachelors and Masters Degrees) at the HCU HafenCity University of Hamburg. Along with the teaching of architecture, the focal point of the visiting professors was in developing a think tank which allowed for research about sustainability in relation to architecture, urban planning, the arts and engineering.

Since 2014, Piet Eckert is Guest Professor at the USI - Università dell Svizzera Italiana at Mendrisio.

Sergei Tchoban

Sergei Tchoban is an internationally active German architect. He is managing partner of TCHOBAN VOSS Architekten and head of the Berlin office. Tchoban studied architecture at the Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. He has lived in Germany since 1991 and has held German citizenship since 1995. After starting at NPS Nietz - Prasch - Sigl in Hamburg in 1992, Tchoban became managing partner of the architectural office now known as TCHOBAN VOSS Architekten in 1995. In 2009, the Tchoban Foundation was established, which is based in the Museum for Architectural Drawing built for this purpose in 2013.

Numerous residential and office buildings, hotels, cultural buildings and revitalisation projects have been created according to his designs and plans, including EDGE Suedkreuz Berlin, Germany's largest office ensemble in sustainable timber hybrid construction, the Berlin Apple store Rosenthaler Strasse, as well as the revitalisation of the Ernst-Reuter-Platz 6 office building and numerous buildings as part of the master planning for Berlin's Osthafen.

In 2020, Tchoban was president of the American Society of Architectural Illustrators ASAI. His architectural drawings have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries worldwide and are in the collections of international museums, archives as well as in private collections. In 2018, Sergei Tchoban was awarded the European Prize for Architecture by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design for his lifework.

Sergei Tchoban is member of the Bund Deutscher Architektinnen und Architekten BDA (Association of German Architects) and the chambers of architects in Hamburg and Berlin.

FRANK OWEN GEHRY

Frank Owen Gehry, was born in 1929 in Toronto (Canada), but adopted American nationality after moving to Los Angeles in 1947 with his parents. He graduated in Architecture in 1954 from the University of Baja California and began working in the studio of Victor Gruen. After completing his military service, he studied Urban Planning at Harvard and returned to Gruen’s office. He moved to Paris in 1961 with his wife and two daughters, where he worked for a year with André Rémondet. In 1962, he opened his own studio –Frank O. Gehry and Associates– in Los Angeles, from which he has worked on projects in America, Europe and Asia for five decades now.

He rose to prominence in the 70s for his buildings with sculptural forms that combine unusual industrial materials such as titanium and glass. During this same period, he began to develop a role as a designer of furniture with his Easy Edges collection, conceived as a low-cost range comprising fourteen pieces made out of cardboard, subsequently followed by the more artistic range, Experimental Edges. Since the late 80s, the name of Frank Gehry has been associated with the deconstructionist movement, characterized by fragmentation and the rupture of a linear design process, resulting in buildings with a striking visual appearance. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1997) and the Nationale-Nederlanden building in Prague (1996), known as the Dancing House, may be considered among the most prominent examples of this formal language. Likewise noteworthy among his works are the Aerospace Museum of California (1984), the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany (1989), the Frederick Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis (1993), the DZ Bank building in Berlin (1998), the Gehry Tower in Hannover (2001), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Stata Center in Cambridge (2003), the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) and the Maggie's Centre in Dundee, Scotland (2003). Gehry has also worked on a museum of contemporary art in Paris for the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the design of his first playground in New York, at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan known as The Battery, and the remodelling and recovery of Mayer Park in Lisbon, which included the restoration of the Capitolio Theatre. In Spain, 2006 saw the opening of the Herederos del Marqués de Riscal winery in Elciego (Álava), and he has also designed the Sagrera Tower in Barcelona.

His work has been the subject of numerous case studies and, in 2006, the film director Sydney Pollack released the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, presented at Cannes. In that same year, he presented his project for the new Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi. In 2008, he designed the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Hyde Park, London. The first residential building in Asia designed by Gehry, the Opus Hong Kong tower, was opened in 2012. He is currently working on the design of the Eisenhower Memorial to be built in Washington; on the West Campus that Facebook is to build in Menlo Park, California and on the project of a residential tower in Berlin, which will become the tallest skyscraper in the city.

His designs have received over one hundred awards around the world. Noteworthy among the distinctions he has received are more than a dozen honorary degrees, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize (USA, 1977), the Pritzker Prize (1989), the Wolf Prize in Arts (Israel, 1992), the Praemium Imperiale (Japan, 1992), the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (1994), the Friedrich Kiesler Prize (Austria, 1998), and the Twenty Five Year Award from the American Institute of Architects (2012). He also holds the National Medal of Arts (USA, 1998), the Lotos Medal of Merit (USA, 1999), the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (1999), and the Royal Gold Medal for the promotion of architecture (2000), awarded by the Queen of England. Gehry has been a member of the Pritzker Prize Jury and of institutions such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the US National Design Academy and the Royal Academy of Arts.

Hans Scharoun SCHAROUN

Hans Scharoun is a German architect born on September 20 th, 1893 in Bremen and died on November 25th, 1972 in Berlin.  He move to Berlin to study architecture in 1912, but he doesn't finish it because he enlisted as a volunteer to serve in World War II. Between 1919 and 1920 he joins the expressionist group Die Gläserne Kette (the "Glass Chain") of Bruno Taut, exchanging correspondence with other movement's members. During his stay in the German capital, he projects with a traditional language abroad - by political reasons - and experiments with fluid spaces inside. It is at this time when he meets Hugo Haring, who will influence him for the rest of his life.

Hitler's dictatorship influences in Scharoun's conception of the building as a democracy, leaving Modernism, and adopting a style where each element is a citizen who participates without losing its identity. 
After completing his studies at the Königliche Technische Hochschule (Technical University of Berlin) he obtains the chair of the Art Academy in Breslau (1925). There he develops his first projects and organizes several exhibitions, including the first one of the expressionist group Die Brücke.

Scharoun - between 1933 and 1945 - turns obsessed with the development of single-family homes, typology which not interests him before or after this time, but it will be at the end of the Second World War when Scharoun consolidates himself in a unique style, and directs his architecture to larger projects, reaching its highest expression in the Philharmonie in Berlin in 1963, completely in a organic style. This project will be worth a reputation as an architect, with whom he developed all kinds of orders until the end of his life.

Peter BEHRENS

Peter Behrens was born on the 14th April 1868 in Hamburg, Germany, within a wealthy family. With 14 years he became orphan, being Karl Sieveking, a member of the prominent families of the city senator, who asumed his tutelage and his only brother's.

Between 1886 and 1889 he studied painting at the School of Art in Karlsruhe, studies that were completed later in Düsseldorf in the year 1889. A year later he gets set in Munich, after a trip through Netherlands, where he worked as a painter, commercial artist , photographer and designer.

In April 1892 he founded the Munich Secession (Verein Bildender Münchens Künstler e. V. Secession) with Franz Stuck, Max Liebermann and Corinth Lovix, among others. Subsequently, the Vereinigte Werkstätten create für Kunst im Handwerk (united by art workshops in crafts), very avant-garde in that year of 1897.

Two years later he abandoned the painting fiesld to design jewelry, furniture, glassware and porcelain. His work will be exhibited at the Keller and Reiner Gallery of Berlin, the Gaspolat Kunsteverein Munich and Darmstadt. In 1900 he was invited by the Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse to join the newly formed Colony of Artists of Darmstadt, where he will be teaching until 1903. It was actually in this place where he made his first architectural work: his home in Colonia,  whose interiors were destroyed in 1944 during a fire, being restored by its owner, Auguste zu Höne.

In 1903 he moved to Düsseldorf, where he became director of the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts). Five years later he became part of the Deutscher Werkbund due to the similarity of ideas he shared with its members. That same year he was named artistic adviser of AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitäts- Gesellschaft), moving to Berlin.

It was precisely for AEG to whom he made the most recognized of his work, also helping to strengthen the idea of corporate identity. Behrens proclaimed the union of art and industry, in line with the ideals of Hermann Muthesius when founding the Deutscher Werkbund. In the years immediately following, his office will receive Walter Gropius, Adolf Meyer, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, being a recognized influence, as show by Gropius himself in his book 'The new architecture and the Bauhaus'. In 1914 he joined the Manifesto of university professors and German scientists, and took part in 1927 in the exhibition organized by the Werkbund in Welbenhof. Between 1922 and 1936 he served as a professor at the School of Architecture of Vienna. In addition, in 1936 he became the director of the Department of Architecture of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin.

He will die on February 27, 1940 of a heart attack at the Hotel Bristol in Berlin, where he was staying after scaping from the cold of his countryside house.

Charles Édouard Jeanneret. LE CORBUSIER

Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland on October 6th, 1887. He is best known as Le Corbusier, one of the most important architects of the XX Century that together with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright rise up as the fathers of Modern Architecture. In his long career, he worked in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Argentina, India and Japan.

Jeanneret was admitted to the Art School of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1902. He knew Charles l’Éplattenier, his first teacher, and he became interested in architecture. He built his first house, Villa Fallet, in 1906, and one year later he set out on his first great journey to Italy. From 1908-1909 he worked in Perret Bother’s Studio, where he focussed on the employment of the concrete, and from 1910-1911 he coincided with Mies van der Rohe in this studio in Berlin.

In 1917, Charles Édouard Jeanneret set up finally in Paris. The next year he met the painter Amedée Ozenfant and he displayed his first paintings and wrote his first book, Après le Cubismo. In 1919 he founded the magazine l´Esprit nouveau, where he published unnumbered articles, signing with the pseudonym Le Corbusier for the first time.

He opened his own Studio in 1922, in the number 35 of the rue de Sèvres. In this decade when his laboratory epoch started he carried out a great number of activities as a painter, essayist, and writer. But also as an architect, he planned some of the most recognizable icons of modern architecture and developed the principles of the free plan. Some of these works are the Villa Roche-Jeanneret, the Villa Savoye in Poissy, and the Siedlungweissenhof’s houses built in Stuttgart in 1927. It should be pointed out that at the same time; he set out the “five points” of the architecture.

Le Corbusier projected “The contemporary three million population city” in 1922 and in 1925 put forward the Voisin plan of Paris, which is one of his most important urban proposals. Three years later, in 1928, through his initiative, the CIAM was created and in 1929 he published his first edition of the Oeuvre Complète.

In the 30s, he collaborated with the magazine Plans and Prélude, where he became enthusiastic about urbanism and he started, in 1930, to elaborate the drawings of the “Radiant City” as a result of the “Green City” planned for Moscu, his project would be summarized in the “Radiant Villa”, which was enclosed with the projects for Amberes, Stockholm, and Paris. By 1931 he presented Argel, a proposal that composed the Obus Plan. And in 1933 the 4th CIAM passed and there he edited the Athens Document.

Le Corbusier, in 1943, developed the “Three Human Establishments Doctrine” and founded the Constructors Assembly for Architectural Renovation (ASCORAL). He made the project the Unite d´habitation of Marsella in 1952, which was the first one of a series of similar buildings. At the same time, the works of Chandigarh in India began, where he planned the main governmental buildings. Nevertheless, in the same decade, he worked in France too, in the Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp, in the convent of La Tourette in Éveux, Jaoul’s houses in Neuilly and the Unites d´habitation of Rézé-lès-Nantes, Briey-en-Forêt and Firminy.

He wrote and published his worldwide known study of the Modulor in 1948 followed by a second part in 1953. Meanwhile the next Le Corbusier’s books had a more autobiographic nature, among them the Le poème de l'angle droit (1955), l'Atelier de la recherche patiente (1960) and Mise aupoint (1966) stand out.

Le Corbusier, at the end of his life, created many projects that would not be built, for example, a calculus center for Olivetti in Rho, Milan; a congress in Strasbourg, the France embassy in Brasilia and a new hospital in Venice.

He died drowned on the 27th of August of 1965 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

JOHN PAWSON

John Pawson was born in 1949 in Halifax, Yorkshire. After a period in the family textile business he left for Japan, spending several years teaching English at the business university of Nagoya. Towards the end of his time there he moved to Tokyo, where he visited the studio of Japanese architect and designer Shiro Kuramata. Following his return to England, he enrolled at the Architecture Association in London, leaving to establish his own practice in 1981.

From the outset the work focused on ways of approaching fundamental problems of space, proportion, light and materials, rather than on developing a set of stylistic mannerisms - themes he also explored in his book Minimum, first published in 1996, which examines the notion of simplicity in art, architecture and design across a variety of historical and cultural contexts.

Early commissions included homes for the writer Bruce Chatwin, opera director Pierre Audi, contemporary art dealer Hester van Royen and collector Doris Lockhart Saatchi, together with art galleries in London, Dublin and New York. Subsequent projects have spanned a wide range of scales and building typologies, from Calvin Klein's flagship store in Manhattan and airport lounges for Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong to the new Cistercian monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dvur in Bohemia.

In May 2006, two decades of visits to the twelfth century Cistercian monastery of Le Thoronet culminated in an exhibition, 'John Pawson: Leçons du Thoronet', the first such intervention ever to be held within the precincts of the abbey. Two weeks after the exhibition opening in Provence,  celebrations in London marked the completion of the Sackler Crossing - a walkway over the lake at Kew's Royal Botanic Gardens. The same year also marked the practice's first stage design, with a set for a new ballet choreographed by Wayne McGregor for the Royal Ballet which premiered at London's Royal Opera House in November 2006.

Walter GROPIUS

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was born in Berlin, son and grandson of architects, whose influence led him to study architecture in Munich and Berlin. After completing his studies, he worked in Peter Behrens' practice, to later become independent. Between 1910 and 1915, he worked primarily on the rehabilitation and expansion of Fagus Factory in Alfeld. With its thin metal structures, large glazed surfaces, flat roofs and orthogonal forms, this work was a pioneer of modern architecture.

In addition, Gropius founded the famous Bauhaus School, a design school that taught students to use modern and innovative materials to create buildings, furniture and original and functional objects. He was in charge of it first in Weimar and then in Dessau, from 1919 to 1928.

From 1926, Gropius was intensely devoted to the design of housing blocks, which saw the solution to social and urban problems, inaddition to betting for the racionalization in the construction industry, which would allow to build faster and more economically.

Before the First World War, Gropius was already part of a movement of aesthetic renovation, represented by the Deutscher Werkbund, which aimed to unite art with industrial design.

After the war, Gropius, in his role as director of the Sächsischen Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) and Sächsischen Hochschule für bildene Kunst (Superior School of Fine Arts), decides to merge the two schools under the name of "Staatliches Bauhaus "combining their academic goals and adding an architecture section. The building constructed for the school itself is a symbol of the most representative ideas of the Bauhaus: "form follows function".

In 1934 Gropius was forced to leave Germany due to the Nazi agressions suffered by the Bauhaus and his own work. He lived and worked for three years in England moving to America later, where he was professor of architecture at the Harvard Design School. In 1946 The Architects Collaborative, Inc., a group of young architects known as TAC, of which he was responsible of the direction and trainig of the memebers for several years.

Walter Gropius died in Boston in 1969, at the age of 86 years old. His buildings reflect the style of the Bauhaus, with new materials used in their construction and giving them a modern look, unknown at that time. Smooth facades and clear lines, lack of unnecessary decorative elements. This architecture has made of him one of the key leaders of the so-called 'International Style' in architecture.

Architects EM2N

EM2N. With offices in both Zurich and Berlin, EM2N with Mathias Müller (*1966) and Daniel Niggli (*1970) has 80 collaborators working on construction and competition projects in Switzerland and abroad. In addition to a number of awards including ‘bestarchitects’, ‘Umsicht-Regards-Sguardi’, the ‘Auszeichnung Guter Bauten’ from the City of Zurich, the Canton of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft, they received the ‘Swiss Art Award’ in Architecture. Mathias Müller and Daniel Niggli were visiting professors at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, as well as in Zurich. Daniel Niggli was a member of the construction commitees in Berlin (2008–12) and Zurich (2010–14).

Their important recent construction projects include the Heuried Sports Centre in Zurich (2017), the Housing Riedpark in Zug (2016), the Lucerne School of Art and Design in Emmenbrücke (2016), the Swiss Film Archive in Penthaz (2015), the Toni-Areal in Zurich (2014), the Keystone Office Building in Prag (2012) and ‘Im Viadukt’– Refurbishment of the viaduct arches in Zurich (2010). Planning has started on, among other projects, the Quartier Heidestrasse, Commercial area in Berlin (since 2016), the Housing Briesetrasse Neukölln in Berlin (since 2015), the New Museum of Natural History Basel and State Archives Basel-City (since 2015) and the Zellweger Parc, Plot D in Uster (since 2014).

EM2N is managed by Mathias Müller and Daniel Niggli together with their associates Bernd Druffel (*1972), Fabian Hörmann (*1978), Verena Lindenmayer (*1975), Björn Rimner (*1978), Gerry Schwyter (*1975) and Christof Zollinger (*1973).

Mathias Müller (1966) graduated on Architecture (1996) by Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ). He develops his educative and professional careen in Switzerland , where, since 1997, works as partner of EM2N office.

1996.- Thesis Prof. A. Meyer / Marcel Meili, ETH Zurich.
1997.- Created EM2N Architekten ETH / SIA.
2004.- Federal Art Awart – Architecture.
2005.- Visiting Professor ETH Lausanne.
2006.- Membership Federation of Swiss Architects.
2009.- 2011 Visiting Professor ETH Zurich.

Daniel Niggli (1970) graduated on Architecture (1996) by Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ). He develops his educative and professional careen in Switzerland , where, since 1997, works as partner of EM2N office.

1996.- Thesis Prof. A. Meyer / Marcel Meili, ETH Zurich.
1997.- Created EM2N Architekten ETH / SIA.
2004.- Federal Art Award – Architecture.
2005.- Visiting Professor ETH Lausanne.
2006.- Membership Federation of Swiss Architects.
2008 - 2012.- Member Baukollegium Berlin.
2009 - 2011.- Visiting Professor ETH Zürich.
2010 - 2014.- Member Baukollegium Zürich.
 

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in Aquisgran the 27th of Marz of 1886 and died in Chicago the 17th of August of 1969. He was active in Germany, from 1908 to 1938, when he moved to USA and where he was until his death. He was also considerate a “master” of the Modern Movement, since the 50s, and he was one of the fathers of this movement with Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Mies van der Rohe, who in his childhood was guided by masters as Hendrik Petrus Berlage or Peter Behrens, he always kept tabs of the Villlet-Le-Duc’s rationalism or Karl Friedrich Schinkel eclectic classicism, having a strong connection with the architectural historicism. As he said in his manifesto “Baukunst und Zeiwille” about this: “it is not possible to move on looking back”.

In 1900 he began to work with his father in the stone workshop of the family and shortly afterward he move to Berlin to work with Bruno Paul in 1902, designing furniture. He planned his first house in 1907, the “Riehl House” in Neubabelsbers and worked from 1908 to 1911 in Peter Behrens’s studio. There he was influenced by structural technics and designs based on steel and glass, as the AEG project in Berlin. While he was in Behrens’s studio he designed the Perls House.

In 1912 he openned his own studio and projected a house in The Hague for Kröller-Müller marriage. The studio received few jobs in its first years, but Mies, contrary to architects as Le Corbusier, in his first years he already showed an architectural policy to follow, being an architect that changed little his architectural philosophy. To his epoch belonged the Heertrasse House and Urbig House as his principal projects.

In 1913 se move to the outskirts of Berlin with his wife Ada Bruhn with whom he would have three kids. The family broke up when Mies was posted to Romania during the World War I.

In 1920, Ludwig Mies changed his surname to Mies van der Rohe and in 1922 he joined as member to the “Novembergruppe”. One year later, in 1923, he published the magazine “G” with Doesburg Lisstzky and Rechter. During this period he worked in two houses, the Birck House and the Mosler House. In 1926, Mies van der Rohe held the post of chief commissioner of the German Werkbund exhibition, being his president this year. In this period he projected the Wolf House in Guden and the Hermann Lange House in Krefeld and in 1927, he met the designer Lilly Reich, in the house exhibition of Weissenhof, where he was director, and he planned a steel structure block for her.

In 1929, he received the project the German National Pavilion to the International Exhibition of Barcelona) rebuilt in 1986=, where he included the design of the famous Barcelona Chair.

In 1930, he planned in Brün – present Czech Republic -, the Tugendhat Villa. He managed the Dessau’s Bauhaus until his closure in 1933. The Nazism forced Mies to emigrate to the United States in 1937. He was designated chair of the Architecture department in Armour Institute in 1938, the one that later merged with the Lewis Institute, forming the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and where he took the responsibility to build a considerable extent of the foundations of the Intitute from 1939 and 1958. One of the buildings of this complex is the Crown Hall, IIT (1950-1956).

In 1940, he met the person who would be his partner until his death, Lora Marx. He became citizen of the USA in 1944 and, one year later, he began with the Farnsworth House’s project (1945-1950). During this stage, in 1948, he designed his first skyscraper: the two towers of the Lake Drive Apartments in Chicago, which were finished in 1951. Shortly after, he planned other building of this typology, the Commonwealth Promenade Apartments, from 1953 to 1956.

In 1958 he projected his most important work: the Segram Building in New York. This building has 37 storeys, covered with glass and bronze, which built and planned with Philip Johnson. He retired from the Illinois Institute of Technology the same year. He also built more towers and complexes as: the Toronto Dominion Centre (1963-1969) and the Westmount Square (1965-1968) and designed the New Square and Office Tower of The City of London (1967).

From 1962 to 1968, he built the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which would be his last legacy to the architecture. The building that rose as exhibition hall is made of steel, glass and granite.

He died in Chicago the 17th of August if 1969 leaving behind a large legacy and influence to next generations.

The Mies van der Rohe’s most famous sentences are “Less is more” and “God is in the details”.
 

JUNG METALOCUS 01

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