Gottfried Böhm

In 1986, when Gottfried Böhm won the Pritzker Prize, the award was only a few years old, but it was already regarded as the greatest international accolade in architecture. Böhm, the first and only German ever to receive the prize, was honored by the Pritzker committee in part for his work from the 1950s and 60s, which was almost exclusively devoted to the construction and reconstruction of churches. Böhm's Pilgrimage Church in Neviges, Germany (1964-68), for example, is a crystalline ecclesiastical building modeled in exposed concrete, and a beautiful example of Böhm's virtuosity. In Böhm's work of this era, the utopian ideas of Expressionist architects, who had dreamed of massive buildings that would generate a sense of community, found a late and surprising outlet in the bosom of the Catholic Church. In later years, Böhm put new and equally surprising accents into home construction, a good example being his work in the Chorweiler district of Cologne (1969-75), as well as public buildings such as the City Hall in Bensberg (1967), which was installed on the remains of a medieval castle. Gottfried Böhm compares and contrasts this influential architect's masterly sketches with photographs of finished buildings. Its essays outline Böhm's career and his larger oeuvre, and a detailed index of works makes it an essential reference.