Meinhard von Gerkan’s 80th birthday – The cosmopolitan – Süddeutsche.de

In 50 years of professional life has realized Meinhard von Gerkan 350 buildings, including museums, concert halls, traffic, hospitals, arenas and airports. His architecture is one of the weltläufigsten that Germany has produced – a tribute on his 80th birthday.

By Gerhard Matzig

If you like the architectural firm gmp (Meinhard von Gerkan, Marg and Partners Volkwin) and is in Hamburg in the phone queue, hear seagulls. This is the location of the office of the Elbchausee owed. The view of the harbor. Hamburg, Gateway to the world. This is Meinhard von Gerkan, who will be 80 years old on Saturday and dates back to Riga from the Baltic Sea to enjoy. A port is not the worst image to describe in 1965 he co-founded gmp.

It is one of weltläufigsten architectural firms that Germany has produced. In the half century of its existence, it gained 590 competitive prices a, 350 buildings were realized, including museums, concert halls, traffic, hospitals, arenas, airports.

It was built great and small, meaningful and commonplace in Gelsenkirchen as in Lingang. 500 employees of gmp work in Aachen, Doha, Moscow -. Gmp is in the world at home

Meinhard von Gerkan, who lost his German-Baltic parents in the war and on the run from Posen and in a Hamburger foster family grew up, when he looks at the Elbe-gulls arrived. But at the same time: ready to leave. When you meet him, he is always on the go from site to site. The port, whether on a water or for the air, is a good place for him, Hamburg is the right place for his headquarters.

But Berlin is fateful for the highly acclaimed architects. Devilish well. And again we are dealing with ports, with the old airport Tegel one hand, and he gave the never-ending insanity of major new airport BER in Schönefeld other.

His birthplace is a tribute to the modern classic

The one airport, a stroke of genius, Tegel, the first drive-in airport in Germany stands at the beginning of the amazing career of Meinhard von Gerkan. The other, Schönefeld, the disaster, by no means marks the end of a career, but is still. A glance at a port, as it can be broken-hearted little

Tegel is still regarded as a milestone in the history of Transport Engineering , BER hand, is more of a stumbling block, which is good at most for a realization:. If you want to make architecture, be wary of political builders, managers and organizations of all kinds

Meinhard von Gerkan meets hardly blame for the debacle in Schönefeld, which was nevertheless caused by the client. But still, he will forever remain a BER-architect – even though he has long since departed from the project

Maybe he should not look today from Hamburg to Berlin in the barren steppe, but back to. Riga.

Sign in prison for Gerkan’s understanding of architecture that constantly reminded of the Bauhaus as the space guides by Le Corbusier, is there at the Riga Baltic Sea beach amidst mighty pines, Villa Guna, which was completed after his 2006 draft. She looks longingly sea. The house is a tribute to the modern classic and an eloquent testimony of the entrenched in this Modern art design of an architect who was last actually perceived only as a “star architect”. But he is above all an architect. A good architect. That’s a lot.