Monday begins with tragic news. On May 8 this year, Helmut Jahn died in Chicago at the age of 81 from a traffic accident. An architect of German descent, who tied his life to the United States, he was the author of many prestigious projects around the world, including the postmodern James R. Thompson Center in Chicago, the Sony Center in Berlin, and the airport in Bangkok. In 2014, his first building in Poland, the Cosmopolitan skyscraper, was completed in Warsaw.
On May 8 this year, while riding his bicycle, Helmut Jahn was hit by two cars. The architect died at the scene of the accident. The collision occurred in Campton Hills, Illinois, near the architect's home.
Helmut Jahn at work
Photo: Albrecht Bangert
Born in Zirndorf near Nuremberg on January 4, 1940, Helmu Jahn, one of the most important contemporary architects, spent most of his life in the United States. Jahn studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich. In 1966, he immigrated to the US to continue his architectural studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago. In 1967, after leaving IIT without a degree, he joined the studio C F Murphy Associates of American architect Charles Francis Murphy, which was renamed Murphy / Jahn in 1981. In 2012, the studio changed its name to JAHN. From 1983 until his death, Helmut Jahn was the office's CEO.
The interior of the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago
Photo: Tomošius from Chicago, U.S.A., CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
The late architect is the author of many prestigious realizations - the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago, a skyscraper in New York, the Sony Center in Berlin, the Market Tower in Frankfurt, the airport in Munich, the headquarters of the European Union. His projects were also created in the Middle East - the Convention Center in Doha, and in Central and East Asia, among others, the Bangkok Airport and the Shanghai Financial Center.
Conceptual models of some of the JAHN studio's projects
photo: Albrecht Bangert
In 2014, the first building designed by Helmut Jahn in Poland was commissioned. The Cosmopolitan skyscraper is a luxury apartment building located in Warsaw at 2/4 Twarda St. The building is surrounded by 1960s point buildings and exemplifies the blending of different architectural styles and phenomena in big cities. In 2017, Helmut Jahn was awarded the Mayor of Warsaw's Architecture Prize for the best residential building in Warsaw (Cosmopolitan), and also received the American Institute of Architects award for lifetime contributions to architecture.
The James R. Thompson Center, which was completed in 1985, is now threatened with demolition. The state of Illinois put the building up for sale last week.
Read about the internship at the JAHN office and the architect himself in Nicholas Zajda's column.
