Josef Paul Kleihues Change this

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Josef Paul Kleihues (June 10, 1933 - August 13, 2004) born in Rheine an der Ems in Germany, was a German architect, teacher and theorist. He developed a distinct architectural language that was shaped by three principal influences: Rationalism, Prussian classicism and a commitment to architectural poetics, which looked beyond the constraints of consumer demand or cost-efficiency.

In 1962 he established his practice in Berlin with H. H. Moldenschardt. From 1986 to 1990 he was the Irwin S. Chanin Distinguished International Professor at the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York. In 1979 Josef Paul Kleihues was appointed director of the IBA Neubau section by the Berlin Senate and he was responsible for several exhibitions in connection with the IBA Berlin 1987, an international building exhibition in Berlin. From 1994 to 1998 he was a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1996 he founded a new practice, Kleihues + Kleihues with his son Jan Kleihues und Norbert Hensel.

Museum Projects

Kleihues received international recognition for several museum projects, including for the Sprergel Museum in Hanover (1972) and the Museum of Prehistory in Frankfurt (1980-86). He continued designing museums, including the Civic Gallery and Lütze Museum in Sindelfingen (1987-90), the Berlin Museum of Contemporary Art, an adaptive reuse of the Hamburger Bahnhof, a 19th-century railway station, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Among his important architectural contributions are Galeria Kaufhof Berlin Alexanderplatz, the "Kant Dreieck" Berlin and the conversion of the Hamburger Bahnhof into the Museum of Contemporary Art Berlin.

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