Buchdaten / Blattgrösse:
4°, 367 S., zahlr., oft farb. Abb., Pläne
Bemerkung:
EA. Erschienen zur Ausstellung Berlin. Text engl.A building glazed on all four sides has its charms as well as its pitfalls. The outside and inside seem to merge seamlessly, light and the surroundings flow unhindered into the living spaces. However, this openness can also interfere with the residents' privacy, which is why the world-famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe had to put up with a legal dispute with his dissatisfied client in the early 1950s after completing the transparent Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois.The Stuttgart architect Werner Sobek skilfully avoided this risk. He was his own client for the construction of a residential building made of glass and steel in the Swabian metropolis. The architectural experiment, which is situated on a hillside and is completely visible, has received national and even international recognition not only for its transparency, but also for its highly innovative energy concept.Werner Sobek's Stuttgart Glass House is one of 25 contemporary buildings presented in the catalogue book New German Architecture A Reflective Modernism, published to accompany the exhibition of the same name. All projects are presented with brilliant architectural photographs, drawings and floor plans and discussed in short accompanying texts.Whether the Nieuwe Luxor Theatre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, by the Münster-based architecture firm Bolles + Wilson, into whose building the audience virtually screws itself from the street, the curved office building Berliner Bogen by the architects Bothe Richter Teherani in Hamburg or the Engelhardt Hof by the architect couple Petra and Paul Kahlfeldt in Berlin, which is convincing in its simplicity: all the buildings presented show that German architecture, which is little recognised beyond national borders, is better than its reputation.In various essays, renowned authors describe the development of German architecture since 1945 and its discourse in a social and political context. The portraits of ten renowned architectural firms show the quality of German post-war architecture and in three introductory essays, the editor Ulrich Schwarz and the Swiss architect Ernst Hubeli describe the basic features of an enlightened modernism in contemporary German architecture.