Oswald Mathias Ungers
Oswald Mathias Ungers ( born July 12, 1926 in Kaiser Esch, Eifel, † September 30, 2007 in Cologne ) was a German architect and architectural theorist. For the well-known outside of Germany were in competition architects architecture experts and publications OMU initials of his name as polarizing "Trademark " for the intransigence of its architecture. He looked at design and design principles obliged to he derived from the past to realize more advanced and contemporary in its buildings across all fashions and schools than in its visual expression of common human orders sought.
Life
The postal worker 's son Oswald Mathias Ungers attended the school from 1932 to 1945 in Mayen. Shortly before the end of the Second World War Unger was drafted into the army and taken prisoner at the end of the war. After his release he made in 1946 on Megina -Gymnasium High School and studied from 1947 to 1950 at the Technical University of Karlsruhe under Egon Eiermann architecture. After successful completion founded Ungers designer offices in Cologne (1950 ), Berlin ( 1964), Frankfurt am Main (1974 ) and Karlsruhe (1983).
Unger was a professor at the Technical University of Berlin, where from 1965 to 1967 Dean of the Faculty of Architecture. Before the particularly strong in Berlin significant student unrest of the late 1960s, he left for a decade in the United States. In 1967 he became a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and their " Chairman of the Department of Architecture " from 1969 to 1975. Simultaneously, he was a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge (1973 ), the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA ) ( 1974-1975 ), the University of Applied Arts in Vienna ( 1979-1980 ) and the Dusseldorf Art Academy (1986-1990). Unger was a member of the Akademie der Künste (Berlin).
Oswald Mathias Ungers died September 30, 2007 from the effects of pneumonia. He married Liselotte Gabler. The marriage produced a son, Simon Ungers, who was a successful architect himself and died in 2006, and two daughters were born. Ungers was buried on October 11, 2013 at the Cologne Melaten cemetery.
Work
Ungers ' buildings are characterized by strict geometrical layout grid. Basic design elements of its architecture are elementary shapes such as square, circle or cube and sphere, the Ungers varies in his designs and transformed. This is also visible in the facade design. As an architectural theorist and professor Ungers developed what his critics the " Quadratismus ," his admirers the " German rationalism " called. He referred back to the teaching of Jean -Nicolas- Louis Durand, who had his 1820 pattern books published with geometric archetypes for " any any old building ." Ungers relied in its form language explicitly on elementary and independent from each time taste design elements of architecture. His historical models in the history of architecture, mainly from the Greco-Roman antiquity. His work was, therefore, but also occasionally criticized as formalistic. In connection with its development on the Exhibition Center Frankfurt was often spoken of a "new clarity ". More than any other architect Ungers remained true to its once chosen design language for decades. He was one of the significant theorists of the so-called second modernity.
Known disciple of Ungers are in addition to other Max Dudler, Hans Kollhoff, Mäckler, Rem Koolhaas, Jürgen Sawade and Eun Young Yi.
Ungers Archive for Architecture Science
Ungers its architecture library, which assembly he began in the 1950s, already convicted in 1990 in a foundation. Priorities of the library form architectural treatises, works on the formation and development of perspective and publications on color theory. The library contains, among other things, the first edition of Vitruvius' De Architectura Libri Decem of 1495 as well as rare editions such as the Bauhaus in Weimar from 1919 to 1923 and publications of the Russian avant-garde, for example, from two squares of the architect El Lissitzky.
Housed she is with his estate in the library cube of Ungers ' landmarked house in Belvedere Straße 60, Köln- Muengersdorf and is available to the scientific community for research work.
Awards and honors
Works
Exhibitions
Of 27 October 2006 to 7 January 2007, the New National Gallery in Berlin organized a retrospective titled OM Ungers. Cosmos of architecture. In addition to a selection of research projects and examples from his collections ( art, books, models ) were shown.