Fritz Bornemann (12 February 1912 in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

– 28 May 2007 in Berlin) was a German

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Life and works

Bornemann studied

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

at the

Technical University of Berlin The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...

. After graduating in 1936, he was Assistant Scenic Designer at the Berlin Municipal Opera and, starting in 1945, Construction Supervisor with the city of Berlin. Since 1950 he became an independent architect active in Berlin. The designs for the

Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek The Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek (AGB; en, America Memorial Library) is one of the largest public libraries in Berlin, Germany. It was co-financed by a donation from the United States. The building was designed by American and German architects, inc ...

(America Commemoration Library) (1951–1955), the

Deutsche Oper Berlin The Deutsche Oper Berlin is a German opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin. The resident building is the country's second largest opera house (after Munich's) and also home to the Berlin State Ballet. Since 2004, the De ...

(1956–1961), the Freie Volksbühne (1961–1963) and the Museumszentrum

Berlin-Dahlem Dahlem ( or ) is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in southwestern Berlin. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a part of the former borough of Zehlendorf. It is located between the mansion settlements of Grunewald and L ...

(1966–1970) were drawn up by him. He also designed the headquarters of the Commerzbank Berlin (1969–1974). Osaka Expo'70 Korean Pavilion

He designed the German Pavilion for the 1970 World's Fair in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

(

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

). With this building Bornemann decisively renounced the large architectonic gesture by burying the exhibition area below ground; a spherical auditorium served for multimedia presentations of current trends in electronic music. Later there appeared, amongst others, the extension of the Rathaus of

Berlin-Wedding Wedding (german: der Wedding; ) is a locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany and was a separate borough in the north-western inner city until it was fused with Tiergarten and Mitte in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform. At the same ti ...

and the University Library in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

. He never built residential houses. Less well known is his work in multimedia. He designed some exhibitions, amongst them ''Atom'' (1953) and ''Farmer Smith'' (1957). The Osaka Pavilion was his crowning achievement in this field. Bornemann's architecture was and is a subject of violent controversial opinions over the modern trends of the 1950s and 1960s. The critics speak of "cold" or "austere" architecture and belittle his buildings with expressions like "elegance in exposed-aggregate concrete." His adherents see in his work a model for modern architecture, and especially for modern theatre architecture. For more than 16 years Fritz Bornemann was chairman of the

Bund Deutscher Architekten The Association of German Architects (German: ''Bund Deutscher Architekten'', BDA) is an association of architects founded in 1903 in Germany. It publishes the bimonthly magazine ''der architekt''. The BDA has over 5,000 members. In 1995, it fo ...

(Association of German Architects).

Competitions

* Imperial Palace in

Addis Ababa Addis Ababa (; am, አዲስ አበባ, , new flower ; also known as , lit. "natural spring" in Oromo), is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. It is also served as major administrative center of the Oromia Region. In the 2007 census, t ...

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

, 3rd Prize (1948) * Municipal Theater of

Gelsenkirchen Gelsenkirchen (, , ; wep, Gelsenkiärken) is the 25th most populous city of Germany and the 11th most populous in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 262,528 (2016) inhabitants. On the Emscher River (a tributary of the Rhine), it lies ...

, 2nd Prize (1953) * Municipal Theater of

, 2nd Prize (1960) *

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

Playhouse (1964)

Awards

* Honorary membership in the

Association of German Architects The Association of German Architects (German: ''Bund Deutscher Architekten'', BDA) is an association of architects founded in 1903 in Germany. It publishes the bimonthly magazine ''der architekt''. The BDA has over 5,000 members. In 1995, it fo ...

Sources

*Schindler, Susanne (ed.): ''Inszenierte Moderne. Zur Architektur von Fritz Bornemann''. Berlin: Jovis Verlag. *Sigel, Paul. 2000. "Der deutsche Beitrag auf der Expo70 in Osaka." ''Arch plus'' no. 149–150 (April): 116–33. Reprinted onlin
''Thema'' 5, no. 1 (July 2000)

External links

* * https://web.archive.org/web/20051126143811/http://www.tu-berlin.de/presse/pi/2003/pi98.htm * http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,485512,00.html * * https://web.archive.org/web/20070927041247/http://www.reffert.de/architekten/bornemann.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Bornemann, Fritz Architects from Berlin 1912 births 2007 deaths