Josef Paul Kleihues; Architect designed Chicago's MCA
Hyfler/Rosner
JOSEF PAUL KLEIHUES, 71;
German architect designed Chicago's modernist MCA
BYLINE: By Blair Kamin, Tribune architecture critic.
Berlin architect Josef Paul Kleihues, the designer of
Chicago's coolly modern and controversial Museum of
Contemporary Art, as well as a significant influence on the
rebuilding of Berlin, died last week, museum officials said
Tuesday.
A statement from Mr. Kleihues' firm, faxed to the museum,
said he died Thursday night or Friday morning at age 71. The
statement did not say where Kleihues died, nor did it
specify the cause of death.
Mr. Kleihues espoused the doctrine of "poetic rationalism,"
which sought to enliven and enrich the functionalist
aesthetic of look-alike glass boxes.
But his strictly symmetrical Museum of Contemporary Art, at
220 E. Chicago Ave., received mixed reviews in 1996 when it
opened on a prime site one block east of North Michigan
Avenue.
Some critics called the MCA, whose sources ranged from
German architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel to Chicago's Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe, an inspired essay in modernism.
But others derided the building as austere and unwelcoming,
especially its west-facing plaza, which features a
steep--and, to many observers, intimidating--flight of
stairs.
In response, Mr. Kleihues evoked the Chicago tradition of
straightforward but elegant architecture.
"In Chicago," he said, "it is not necessary that buildings
jump and dance. There is no need for any decoration or any
loud design."
Last year, however, the museum erected a temporary
installation of benches, chairs and pavilionlike structures,
designed by Chicago architect Doug Garofalo, that sought to
make the monumental plaza more human-scaled.
In Berlin, Mr. Kleihues was among the architects who called
for the city's "critical reconstruction," arguing that
modernist planners had destroyed the German capital's
traditional coherency and scale.
He advocated filling the gaps left by wartime destruction
and modernist redevelopment with street-shaping buildings
that followed the scale, but not the construction methods,
of 19th Century Berlin.
The approach won the ear of Hans Stimmann, Berlin's powerful
director of building, and it shaped large chunks of the city
after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
Born in the German region of Westphalia in 1933, Mr.
Kleihues was educated in Germany and Paris. He taught
architecture and urban planning at German universities and
at New York's Cooper Union architecture school. He directed
Berlin's International Building Exposition, a showcase for
new architecture, from 1984 to 1987.
The MCA announced Mr. Kleihues' selection in 1991 after an
international search. The museum was his first American
building. His other notable works include the Museum of
Prehistory in Frankfurt, Germany.