Josef Paul Kleihues 1933-2004

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 2004 by Layla Dawson

Professor Josef Paul Kleihues, who died in Berlin on 13 August, will be remembered for his devotion to the intellectual concept and physical form of the European city and, in particular, Berlin's development after German reunification in 1990. Like most of his generation, his ideas were shaped by the destruction of war and opposing concepts of post-war reconstruction. Although born in a small town north of Munster, the problems of the city attracted him to the divided former capital. After studying in Stuttgart, Berlin, and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Kleihues opened his first office in Berlin in 1962.

His seminal project was Block 270, a residential building in Berlin-Wedding, designed in 1971. While his contemporaries experimented with their role as social engineer, he chose to re-establish the Berlin block plan, a traditional option which became a counter-revolutionary deed. He once said, 'I am for solid building. One should build buildings that are able to survive, not just twenty, but fifty years without major repair'. As professor in Germany and the US, and director of Berlin's 1979-1987 IBA, Kleihues propagated a concept of urban 'critical reconstruction', understood by many as critical of Modernism.

However, despite the 'Berlin debate', Kleihues actively encouraged many international architects, who did not necessarily agree with his theories, to build in Berlin. He was on the jury which chose Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum extension design and in a Die Welt newspaper interview earlier this year, when asked about their difference of opinion over the new federal capital's development, Kleihues said. 'It was a shame, the way that discussion came about, but that's a closed chapter now'.

His best projects, displaying elegance and clarity, were refurbishments of old structures for modern uses; Hamburg's Deichtor Halls, Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art, Frankfurt am Main's Prehistoric and Early History Museum. Among his new buildings, the 1994 Kant Dreieck Berlin office block stands out for its extraordinary silver shark's fin, designed in homage to the dancer Josephine Baker. Reconstructions of Haus Sommer and Haus Liebermann, flanking the Brandenburg Gate, showed an energetic Post-Modernism reduced to historical cloning. A successful adaptation, however, was the transformation of Reichle's 1935 propaganda ministry into the present Federal Ministry of Health and Social Security. Kleihues blew out the ghosts while preserving enough of the past as a warning for the future. He was also prominent in another controversial and still current issue, as lobbyist for the reconstruction of both Schinkel's Bauakademie and Berlin's former Palace. While absorbed in the problems of reinstating the European city, Kleihues was unique among his generation of German architects for being able to win and complete a project outside Europe: Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, 1991.

He strove for balance. Once asked for his life's motto Kleihues answered, 'Poesie acquia regulae'. (Rules and poetry harmonize well with each other.) Thus he embraced not only the Classical language, but also another age of architectural discourse, at odds with today's superficial urban marketing.