Helmut Jahn

Helmut Jahn

Hailed as "the flamboyant bad boy of post-modern architecture," Helmut Jahn emerged in the late 1960s as the most brilliant architect of his generation. Born in a farming village near Nuremberg, Germany, he graduated form the Technische Hochschule in Munich and then entered the Illinois Institute of Design in Chicago. The legendary modern architect Mies Van Der Rohe cast a long shadow over both institutions; the young Helmut Jahn took his forerunner's austere rectilinear style as a point of departure, but soon asserted an artistic identity of his own, with curved and octagonal, or as he calls them, "omnidirectional" buildings, their structures defined by contrasting textures and colors of glass, metal and granite. Hired as an assistant by a leading Chicago architectural firm, C.F. Murphy Associates; he soon became President of the firm, known today as Murphy/Jahn. In the first two decades of his career, he completed more than 100 major projects, including the Xerox Centre in Chicago, the Liberty Place Tower in Philadelphia and IBM Park Avenue Tower in New York. Under his leadership, Mruphy/Jahn has become a leading international firm, building landmarks such as Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, the Messeturm in Frankfurt and the Sony Center in Berlin. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1991 Summit in New York City, he shares his passion for architecture and urges the students to reject the ordinary and extend the frontiers of art and technology.