Josef Paul Kleihues (June 11, 1933, Rheine - August 13, 2004, Berlin) was a German architect, most notable for his decades long contributions to the "critical reconstruction" of Berlin. His design approach has been described as "poetic rationalist".[1]
Born in 1933 in Rheine, he studied architecture at the University of Stuttgart (1955-57) and Berlin Institute of Technology (1957-59). After graduation, he spent one year at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After having worked in the architectural practice of Peter Poelzig in West Berlin, in 1962 he founded his own practice with Hans Heinrich Moldenschardt.[1]
In 1971 he designed "Block 270", a residential building in Berlin-Wedding. This became a seminal work which re-established the Berlin block plan, a traditional typology, which stood in opposition to contemporary urban planning. As professor at the Dortmund University of Technology from 1973[1] and director of the International Building Exhibition Berlin (IBA) between 1979-1987, Kleihues propagated the concept of urban "critical reconstruction".[2]
Kleihues received international recognition for several museum projects, including for the Sprengel Museum in Hanover (1972) and the Museum of Prehistory in Frankfurt (1980-86). He continued designing museums, including the Civic Gallery and Lütze Museum in Sindelfingen (1987-90), the Berlin Museum of Contemporary Art, an adaptive reuse of the Hamburger Bahnhof, a 19th-century railway station, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.[1]
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