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It is incredibly sad 2 hear that we’v lost 1 of the most virtuoso, excentric, & brilliant architects of the postmodern era, Helmut Jahn, the German who made Chicago home & became Mies’ wildly opposite archichild. This is his Park Avenue Tower, NYC, 1987, photos by @VMatteis
Iv always been an avowed Jahn fan, I think I get as excited about his corporate work as others seem to about Foster... I mean, just LOOK (and yes very copied, and badly so, so what, just makes these look even better)
Liberty Place, Philadelphia, 1985-7
Liberty Place, Philadelphia, 1985-7
This is his incomparably brilliant and cathedral-esque State of Illinois Center (1985), a publuc building in Chicago (which is sadly under threat of demolition)
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photo from http://archpaper.com/2018/11/sale-o …
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photo from http://archpaper.com/2018/11/sale-o …
Here’s an article I wrote about it a few years ago
No one did entrances quite like Helmut Jahn, these were the architectural equivalent of FULL ON shoulder pads and power suits. 425 Lexington Avenue, New York, 1987
His office also always produced exquisite drawings...
I’ll never forgive my home city London for building the oily pig on the right, instead of Jahn’s svelte design for the same site on the left
This is his soaring and elegant Messeturm in Frankfurt, bizarrely overlooked for Foster’s faux-sustainable Commerzbank
No one, and I mean no one, could get even vaguely close to the coruscating, jewel-like, decadent sheen that Jahn could imbue his buildings with. This is 10940 Wilshire Tower, Los Angeles, from 1988
One of New York’s greatest unbuilt buildings has to be Jahn’s design for South Ferry Plaza, 1985
North Western Terminal Building, Chicago, Helmut Jahn, 1984-7
This is the polychrome tunnel-of-dreams in Jahn’s United Airlines Terminal, O'Hare, Chicago, 1985-88
This is his somewhat bonkers Sony Centre in Potzdamerplatz, Berlin, 1995-8
Americana Plaza, Chicago, 1982-3, was definitely one of his stranger designs
