Organic architecture: Hans Scharoun's iconic designs

The no-man's-land along the border in a divided Berlin: The building site for the new Berlin Philharmonic concert hall definitely wasn't prestigious. The location of the avant-garde building was an audacious decision. In 1963 Hans Scharoun opened up a new space by creating a futuristic concert hall to replace the previous Philharmonic, destroyed during WWII.

In the main concert hall, Scharoun innovatively grouped rows of seats in offset terraces around the stage for optimal acoustics. Star conductor Herbert von Karajan felt at home in the modern concert hall, which is why Berliners nicknamed the Philharmonie "Circus Karajani."

The master architect also conceived the interior design of the Berlin Philharmonie. These colored glass elements built into the facade add a cheerful touch to the interior of the foyer, even on a gray Berlin day. Lighting design was an important element of Scharoun's work.

Aiming to turn Weimar-era Berlin into a modern European metropolis, Scharoun integrated ambitious urban planning concepts in some of his architectural projects. With the Siemensstadt Housing Estate from 1929, he developed modern functional apartments in the New Objectivity style. The architect lived there himself. The estate in west Berlin is now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The curves of the balconies of the apartments of the Siemensstadt Housing Estate were avant-garde propositions in the 1920s. The colored awnings were also unusual at the time. The estate was built to house the workers of the nearby Siemens electrical factory. Walter Gropius and Otto Bartning also contributed to designing the modernist apartments of the residential area covering 19.3 hectares.

Scharoun was blacklisted by the Nazis as a "degenerate" architect and had to keep most of his ideas on paper only or work on family houses under the Third Reich. The Schminke house, built in the city of Löbau in Saxony in 1933, is nevertheless one of the most remarkable designs of the architect's career. The house is accessible to the public.

In 1964, Scharoun's office won the competition to design a new building for the Berlin State Library. Inspired by the idea of developing a democratic educational society, Scharoun created innovative learning spaces. However, its construction was only completed after the architect's death in 1972.

"Education for all": the principle guided many aspects of society at the end of the 1960s, including architecture. Hans Scharoun aimed to translate this idea in open, playful forms, for example in the interior of the Berlin State Library. The German architect was born 125 years ago on September 20, 1893. He died on November 25, 1972.

Hans Scharoun's bold style left its mark on the designs of today's architects. Completed in 2016, Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie concert hall, features direct references to the organic shapes designed by Scharoun for the Berlin Philharmonie in the 1960s.