Germany

Together with his partners, Meinhard von Gerkan has written architectural history over the past 50 years: the practice started life with a drum roll, with the Berlin-Tegel Airport being the first project; today, over 380 projects have been completed.

To this day, von Gerkan develops his designs with the help of sketches. On the occasion of the 50-year anniversary of gmp – Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners and von Gerkan’s 80th birthday, the "Lines of Thoughts" exhibition in the newly built Architecture Pavilion at Elbchaussee presents selected projects from his archive, which includes well over 3,000 architectural sketches, in order to illustrate how his projects develop.

A concrete tree trunk growing in the middle of a commercial street in Tokyo, an airport terminal that looks almost like a bird’s wing, a skyscraper facade that seems to move like ocean waves, a visitors’ center perfectly integrated into the landscape of Taiwan’s largest lake – nature is everpresent in Japanese architect Norihiko Dan’s buildings. His architecture never stands alone, for Dan always seeks symbiosis; this appears in his combination of geometric-archetypical with organic forms, in his urban planning projects, which bring submerged historic and cultural identities back to light, as well as in the ecological orientation of his buildings. With dramatic contrasts in architectural language and choice of materials Norihiko Dan insistently calls for a relationship between human beings and their surroundings.

The emphasis on light and lighting now is more than ever and this is evident from the global initiative by UNESCO to declare and celebrate 2015 as the International Year of Light. With this in mind, Nightscape 2050 is a unique exhibition dedicated to Lighting and is aimed to explore a completely new horizon of lighting design. This exhibition aims to explore the interactions between people, light, and cities in the year 2050.