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The Grand Glass Facades of Berlin’s Sony Center

 

If you’ve been to Berlin in the past 15 years, then you’ve no doubt seen the incredible transformation of Potsdamer Platz that helped reinvent the city in the wake of many tumultuous decades.

Designed by renowned German-American architect Helmut Jahn, the Sony Center is essentially a complex of eight buildings connected by a large tent-like atrium. Within in the buildings are the same kinds of establishments you’d find in pretty much any other city – shops, restaurants, condos, corporate offices, museums, and movie theaters (including an IMAX). Fun to peruse, sure, but nothing revolutionary. What makes the Center a fascinating place to visit, however, is the experience of being immersed in its architecture.

 

 

Jahn’s own words describe it best:

“In the reconstruction of Berlin, the Sony Centre stands for a new technical vision and order. Light, both natural and artificial, is the essence of the design. The Sony Centre is luminous, not illuminated. The glass facades and roof act as a fabric that moderates the natural and artificial light. With its characteristics of transparency of permeability to light, reflection and refraction, there is a constant change of images and effect during day and night, affecting not only the appearance but also maximizing the comfort and minimizing the use of energy resources. The Sony Centre is a ‘Kulturform’ (a new form of culture) for the millennium where the serious business of entertainment is portrayed as the real challenge to the high arts of classical music, theatre and painting.”

 

 

Two years ago in Chicago, Jahn was honored with the prestigious American Institute of Architects (AIA) Lifetime Achievement Award. Check out this inspiring video created for the occasion, which highlights his many accomplishments over the years.