German Architecture

If asked to name buildings by German architect and designer Peter Behrens (14 April 1868 – 27 February 1940), few people would be able to answer with anything other than his AEG Turbine Factory in Berlin. His style was not one that lends itself easily to canonization; indeed, even the Turbine Factory itself is difficult to appreciate without an understanding of its historical context. Despite this, Behrens' achievements are not to be underestimated, and his importance to the development of architecture might best be understood by looking at three young architects who worked in his studio around 1910: Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.

For the ninth consecutive year, Vienna has placed first in Mercer rankings on cities with the best quality of life in the world. Despite the current economic volatility in the European continent, the Austrian capital joins eight other European cities in the top ten. 

Johann David Steingruber was a German architect and designer with over 100 buildings to his name, including many churches, town halls, school buildings and even breweries. However, perhaps what he is best known for today are the intricate illustrations of his 1773 Architectural Alphabet, in which he converted the alphabet into plans for a series of eccentric baroque palaces.

From the greystone of Montreal to the limestone of Jerusalem, every city has its own iconic identity read through the city’s urban fabric. Scanning the architecture of the 1,110-year-old German town of Nördlingen, the timber frame homes, red pitched roofs, and winding streets appear identical in almost every regard to many quaint medieval communities populating the European countryside. 

Danish firm Dorte Mandrup A/S has been announced as the winners of a competition to design the new Trilateral Wadden Sea World Heritage Partnership Center on a historic UNESCO naval site in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Selected from 14 entries, the firm’s winning proposal will seemingly float atop an existing World War II bunker and house the offices of a joint Danish, German and Netherlandish corporation working to protect the Wadden Sea area.

The 2018 DAM Preis for the best building in Germany has been been awarded to bogevischs buero and SHAG Schindler Hable Architekten for their visionary residential housing project wagnisART in Munich. Selected from a list of 4 finalists, the project was lauded by the jury for setting new “social, architectural, and urban planning standards” in becoming a model for future residential housing projects in Germany.

The career of Gottfried Böhm (born January 23, 1920) spans from simple to complex and from sacred to secular, but has always maintained a commitment to understanding its surroundings. In 1986, Böhm was awarded the eighth Pritzker Prize for what the jury described as his "uncanny and exhilarating marriage" of architectural elements from past and present. Böhm's unique use of materials, as well as his rejection of historical emulation, have made him an influential force in Germany and abroad.

The new year is almost here, and Richard Meier & Partners has four international projects that will be coming to fruition. These new multi-use building designs play with light, transparency, and volume as well as respond to their varying urban context. 

MVRDV has unveiled the design of an adaptable building to be located at the center of Munich’s Knödelplatz square adorned with 5-meter-tall (16-foot-tall) German internet slang words as a homage to the neighborhood’s graffiti culture. To be known as WERK12, the building will house flexible entertainment, restaurants, office space and a multi-story fitness center within a highly transparent envelope, allowing the building to become a vertical extension of the plaza.

The Austrian firm Cukrowicz Nachbaur Architekte has been selected as the winner of an international competition for the design of a signature new concert hall in Munich, Germany, beating out proposals from 30 of the world’s most notable architecture practices.