Hans Scharoun
Hans Scharoun designed the Berlin Philharmonie with the orchestra in the middle and the audience on terraces around it. His organic modernism started from people and their movements rather than from right angles.
Hans Scharoun was born in 1893 in Bremen and grew up in Bremerhaven. He studied architecture in Berlin and served in the First World War. After the war he was part of Expressionist circles around Bruno Taut and sketched fantastic buildings. He taught at the Academy of Art in Breslau and in 1927 contributed a house to the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart. He built housing in Berlin, including in Siemensstadt, and villas such as the Haus Schminke in Löbau.
During the Nazi period Scharoun built villas and housing but no public buildings. After the war he became director of city planning in Berlin and made plans for the destroyed city. His great works came late. The Berlin Philharmonie, opened in 1963, has the orchestra in the middle and the audience on terraces surrounding it, and the roof has the form of a tent. He also designed the State Library opposite, completed after his death, and schools and housing, among them the Romeo and Juliet towers in Stuttgart.
Scharoun died in Berlin in 1972. His organic architecture, which he called organhaft, was an alternative to right-angled modernism. The Philharmonie’s plan with the orchestra in the middle has influenced concert halls all over the world, among them the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Elbphilharmonie. He is regarded as one of the most original German architects of the 20th century.