Exhibition of Helmut Jahn's buildings photographed by Rainer Viertlböck
About an exhibition of Helmut Jahn’s buildings photographed by Rainer Viertlböck at the Architekturgalerie München.
At the beginning of the 2000s, people were still faxing quite a lot. So it was a fax on which Helmut Jahn first discovered a photo by Rainer Viertlböck of one of his buildings, the Highlight Towers in Munich, and was certain: “This is the way how the building has to be photographed.” From then on, Viertlböck photographed all of Jahn’s buildings. A selection of these photos from Chicago, New York, Guanghzou, Munich and Berlin can currently be seen in an exhibition at the Architekturgalerie München.
Viertlböck uses at least one lifting platform for his photo assignments, and often also drones, helicopters or other things to reach a certain height. Sometimes the photo assignments can also be quite intense in terms of time. The photos of Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, for example, took a year and a half and lasted a total of 22 weeks. What fascinates Viertlböck about Jahn’s architecture is “the generosity of his spaces, the avoidance of the unnecessary”. The idea behind the photos at the airport in Thailand was also to capture the pure, spacious condition without screens and various other installations, which were often installed just a few hours after the opening of a new construction phase, in all its clarity. Viertlböck rented an apartment near the airport and very often walked the entire airport – six kilometers – very early in the morning with his team to see what would be finished that day.
It seems logical that Viertlböck has now photographed all of Helmut Jahn’s work. Including the early buildings from 1971, when Jahn’s architectural signature first became visible, as well as the hedonistic power towers from the 1980s. Jahn, a native of Zirndorf near Nuremberg, came to Chicago in 1966 after studying architecture at the Technical University of Munich to complete a postgraduate degree at MIT. He quickly became bored. So he started working part-time at the architecture firm C. F. Murphy, one of the big firms from the Mies era, and became a partner, office manager and, after Murphy’s death, owner. Today, Jahn is 75 years old and still not thinking about quitting, but thanks to his office partner, the Mexican Francisco Gonzalez Pulido, he is no longer responsible for all projects. Perhaps he sails a little more often now. In any case, Viertlböck still has a few jobs ahead of him.
If you can’t make it to the Architekturgalerie München by October 24, you can either wait until Helmut Jahn’s next exhibition or take a look at the extensive publication just released by Schimer Mosel Verlag.
The cover photo of B8 is by Hendrik Lietmann, Ostkreuz.
Better big? Residential construction on a larger scale does not usually have a good reputation. However, it is clear that new living space is needed, especially in cities. In addition, the aspect of sustainability in construction is becoming increasingly important. You can find out whether large-scale residential construction can offer a solution to these challenges in the August issue. Read more in the editorial by Editor-in-Chief Fabian Peters.
Better big? Residential construction on a larger scale does not usually have a good reputation. However, it is clear that new living space is needed in cities in particular. In addition, the aspect of sustainability in construction is becoming increasingly important. You can find out whether large-scale residential construction can offer a solution to these challenges in the August issue. Read more in the editorial by Editor-in-Chief Fabian Peters.
Lack of living space
“We need to build more apartments!” This is apparently the majority opinion among politicians. The not-so-new German government has taken up this goal and written it into the coalition agreement. “We must hardly build any more, if at all”, say climate researchers and environmental activists, referring to the enormous amounts of energy consumed in the process. One thing is certain: If the answer to the lack of living space in metropolitan areas, especially affordable living space, can only be new construction, then small apartment buildings or even single-family homes will not be an option. We need to plan and build in large formats. And as little energy as possible must be used in the process. This can be achieved by using sustainable materials and building as efficiently as possible. Industrial construction methods could play a key role in the future.
The fate of large buildings
Industrial construction? For many, the images of large housing estates in both East and West immediately spring to mind. In West Germany, these neighborhoods were the epitome of social hotspots – and in many cases still are today. Much has now been achieved through neighborhood management. Nevertheless – whether Chorweiler, Neuperlach, Gropiusstadt or Märkisches Viertel, these are addresses that still have a stigma attached to them. Can new large-scale residential buildings escape the fate of their predecessors from the sixties and seventies? Or will we have a new Pruitt-Igoe moment in 25 years’ time?
Building on a larger scale as a solution to the lack of living space?
For this issue, we looked at different concepts for large-scale residential construction, talked to experts about technologies and strategies, and looked at projects and experiences in our neighboring countries France, Austria and the Netherlands. Whether we want to create more living space in the future in the form of large-scale residential construction and to what extent – this is a discussion we will have to have intensively in the coming years.
Our South Tyrol issue was published in July, in which we looked at new buildings in rural areas and the conversion of historic buildings. Read more here: South Tyrol
08.12.2024
The “Enscape moment”: revolution in the design workflow of architects
Create photorealistic visualizations from planning material easily and in real time: Anyone using the Enscape visualization plugin from the Karlsruhe-based company of the same name for the first time will soon have their first aha experience.
Create photorealistic visualizations from planning material easily and in real time: Anyone using the Enscape visualization plug-in from the Karlsruhe-based company of the same name for the first time will soon have their first aha experience.
Do you work intensively with construction plans day in, day out? Then over time you will certainly have developed the ability to imagine a building in 3D in your mind’s eye from the abstract information available in the plan in 2D. However, the people who ultimately decide on the awarding of contracts and project budgets often do not have this ability. They are dependent on visualizations in order to get a solid impression of the future conditions and the planning quality of the designs.
Visualizations with Enscape
Enscape is the market leader in architectural visualization. The software plugin for the five most commonly used modeling programs allows images, virtual realities or videos of the future building to be generated in photorealistic quality at the touch of a button. This is all done in-house and can take place at the same workstation where the planning is carried out. Orders to external rendering companies are therefore no longer necessary to create visualizations. This has several advantages. On the one hand, visualizations can be created quickly and easily between planning iterations, which simplifies and speeds up communication with clients. On the other hand, the visualizations can be designed exactly as the architecture firm intends for the respective project – and not as a rendering company sees fit.
It couldn’t be quicker or more convenient
Enscape transfers changes to the building in the modelling program to the visualization in real time. It couldn’t be quicker or more convenient: Enscape makes it possible to combine modelling and visualization at the same workstation and in the same workflow. Familiarization with the software is quick and intuitive. No special knowledge or time-consuming training is required to use Enscape.
Enscape instead of model making in the Kohlbecker office
At the Kohlbecker Gesamtplan architecture firm, for example, the functions of Enscape are used to keep clients up to date during the various phases of a design. As a trained carpenter, architect Florian Kohlbecker has built hundreds of models over the years, but he has never been a big fan of this activity, as he admits in the interview below. In addition, although models can give a certain impression and overview of the building project, things such as materiality, lighting moods, spatiality and scale can not only be presented more convincingly in virtual reality today, but also much faster. A typical Enscape moment. Kohlbecker has no doubts about the added value of the software in his office’s day-to-day work:
“It makes it much easier. We used to need countless models of different situations to explain our plans to the customer. Now we can very quickly visualize room and lighting situations and create variants that convince the customer”
Aha moment at Scopebox
Oana Bucerzan also uses Enscape enthusiastically in her daily work. She is the founder of the Swiss architecture firm Scopebox and has already had countless Enscape moments. So many, in fact, that she has lost count. But one that sticks in her mind in particular was during a conversion project for two maisonettes in the old town of Basel. The client was initially unaware that the attic apartments would have a two-storey airspace. It was only during a virtual real-time rendering tour of the apartments with Enscape that this fact became clear to him. The reaction of the astonished client: “That’s so chic!”
It was only at this moment that the client realized what he was actually going to get. He would not have been able to tell this from the plan material alone. Bucerzan has also found that visualizations and videos are helpful in bringing customers closer to a construction project. However, the option of taking a virtual building tour using VR glasses and Enscape is even more convincing. More on this in the interview below. For Bucerzan, Enscape has become an indispensable element of her daily planning work:
“My motto is always simply to try things out. And once you get involved with Enscape, you never go back. Working with Enscape is simply fun,” says the architect about the visualization software.
New Enscape version 3.3
In the latest version 3.3, Enscape now offers brand new functions, such as “Site Context”, a function that allows you to generate the surroundings of the building in no time at all so that you can assess the overall context in which it will stand. With “Alpha Channel Export”, the background of a scene can easily be made transparent in order to replace it with your own images. Version 3.3 also includes an extensive library of assets relating to education and learning and many other useful functions.
Enscape comes as a plugin that is compatible with the five most commonly used BIM and CAD programs (Revit, SketchUp, Rhinoceros 3D, ArchiCAD and Vectorworks). Enscape starts at 39.90 euros per month (with annual payment). If you would like to get a practical impression of the visualization software first, you can download a trial version here. It can be used free of charge for 14 days.
