Jahn, Helmut

▪ 2001

      With the opening in 2000 of the Sony Center in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, German architect Helmut Jahn showed that at age 60 he had not lost any of his flair for the dramatic, an attribute that had fueled his rise to prominence in the 1980s as a young star of the international architectural scene. The Sony Center—a seven-building, at least $800 million complex made up of an office tower, residences, and retail and entertainment space—was Jahn's most grandiose project to date. Characterized by a glass sheathing that made the buildings appear to be lacking outside walls, the Sony Center displayed an attention to functionality that marked Jahn's return to a simpler style. After having made a name for himself by designing a series of distinctive—some would call them “cartoonish”—Postmodern buildings throughout much of his career, Jahn had earned the nickname “Flash Gordon.”

      Jahn was born on Jan. 4, 1940, in Nürnberg, Ger. His decision to pursue architecture as a career came when, as a young man, he witnessed the rebuilding of Nürnberg, which had been bombed extensively during World War II. He studied (1960–65) at the Technische Hochschule in Munich before leaving for the United States to spend a year at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was propounding his “less is more” philosophy, which heavily influenced the construction of spare steel-and-glass skyscrapers during the late 20th century. Jahn became a disciple of Mies, and after he joined C.F. Murphy Associates in Chicago in 1967, much of his work bore the mark of the master's teachings—functional structures based on what were thought to be rational, objective principles. Early works included the McCormick Place convention centre in Chicago (1970) and Kemper Arena (1974) and the Kansas City Convention Center (1976), both in Kansas City, Mo.

      Jahn became head of Murphy/Jahn Associates in 1982 and, during the office-building boom of the 1980s, carved his niche, working in Chicago and other parts of the U.S. He began to take the glass-and-steel approach in a different, less-restrictive direction, making use of light, colour, and space in an attempt to place structures within the context of their locale or their purpose. His most prominent work, the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago's Loop, would have a significant impact on the public's perception of Jahn and his style. The futuristic government office tower—with its massive central blue-glass-covered rotunda devoted to enhancing the building's some 7,400 sq m (80,000 sq ft) of retail space—did not receive entirely favourable reviews locally. The reputation of the building—and of Jahn himself—took another battering when the air-conditioning system malfunctioned. Jahn claimed, however, that it was this building that had attracted many overseas clients to him. After 1985 most of his significant work was done in Europe, where he said the attitude toward architecture had become much more adventurous and interesting than in the U.S. His next big project was the Max, a bank building in Frankfurt, Ger., that was being billed as a “transparent skyscraper.”

Anthony G. Craine

* * *

▪ German architect

born January 4, 1940, Nürnberg, Germany

      German-born American architect known for his postmodern steel-and-glass structures.

      After graduating from the Technische Hochschule in Munich in 1965, Jahn moved to Chicago to study at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a school long associated with the Modernist aesthetic of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig) and his followers. On the basis of this solid design background, Jahn was hired by Chicago architectural firm C.F. Murphy Associates to work on the Miesian design for McCormick Place (1968–71) in Chicago. The firm was later renamed Murphy/Jahn, with Jahn becoming its president and CEO in 1983.

      In the late 1970s and '80s, Jahn made his mark, designing extravagant buildings that combined historical and contextual references—the central tenets of postmodern architecture—with high-tech engineering solutions. The most notable, and at times controversial, example from this period is his State of Illinois Center (1979–85) in Chicago. Its plan refers to the American tradition of centrally planned domed state capitols. At the same time, its dramatic blue-and-pink glass-and-steel appearance and spectacular (if noisy and impossible to climatize) central atrium makes a bold, modern statement about the open nature of government. Jahn created other notable buildings in Chicago, including the steel-and-glass arched roofs of the United Airlines Terminal at O'Hare International Airport (1983–87). This shed is evocative of the grand Victorian railroad stations of the 19th century, while it also utilizes whimsical light and sound effects. His projects in the late 1980s and '90s included a series of international skyscrapers, such as Two Liberty Place (1989–91) in Philadelphia and several international Hyatt hotels.

      By the turn of the 21st century, Jahn's buildings were beginning to sprout all over the United States and, indeed, the world. Notable later examples include the Munich Airport Center (1990–99), the Twenty-First-Century Tower in Shanghai (1999–2001), and the SONY Center in Berlin (1993–2000). In these later works, Jahn moved away from whimsy, a quality sometimes criticized in his early work, and instead adopted a more understated vocabulary rooted in European Modernism and straightforward engineering solutions.

Additional Reading

Werner Blaser, Helmut Jahn: Transparency, trans. from German by John Dennis Gartrell (1996); Susanne Anna and Nicola Kuhn, Archi-Neering: Helmut Jahn, Werner Sobek (1999).

* * *