Gottfried Böhm Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Gottfried Böhm (1920-2021) was a German architect and sculptor whose expressive concrete buildings, above all the Pilgrimage Church of Mary, Queen of Peace in Neviges, made him one of the most important figures of postwar German architecture. Son of the church architect Dominikus Böhm, he built churches, town halls, offices and housing over seven decades, and in 1986 became the first German to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Offenbach, Cologne and Munich

Böhm was born in Offenbach am Main in 1920 into a family of builders and architects; his father Dominikus Böhm was a leading designer of modern Catholic churches. After military service in the Second World War he studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich, graduating in 1946, and then sculpture at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, before joining his father’s office in Cologne.

Churches of concrete

After his father’s death in 1955 Böhm took over the practice and designed dozens of churches for the rebuilding of postwar Germany. The Pilgrimage Church in Neviges (1968), a crystalline mountain of folded concrete, and the Church of the Resurrection of Christ (Christi Auferstehung) in Cologne (1970), with its stacked concrete and brick volumes, are among the most powerful sacred buildings of the period.

Bensberg and civic buildings

At the Bensberg Town Hall (1969) Böhm wrapped the ruins of a medieval castle with a sculptural concrete structure and tower, merging old and new. His later works, often designed with his wife Elisabeth and their sons, include the Züblin headquarters in Stuttgart (1985), the WDR arcades in Cologne and the Hans Otto Theatre in Potsdam (2006). He received the Pritzker Prize in 1986 and died in Cologne in 2021, aged 101.