The origins
The first architectural feats appeared in the Neolithic period, when the fascinating "palafittic" sites around the Alpine lakes appeared. This term refers to wooden dwellings on stilts designed to adapt to marshy areas. Another important site and symbol of the Viking era is the Hedeby archaeological complex. This thousand-year-old trading town still contains traces of streets, buildings and cemeteries, all protected by the Danevirke, a system of fortifications consisting of ramparts, ditches and earthworks. This protective architecture was also used by the Romans. The various stretches of Roman frontier known as "limes" reveal an incredible science of engineering, particularly hydraulic, and an unrivalled mastery of topography. Military bases and ephemeral camps were developed there, with watchtowers and other fortresses. The splendors of Trier, often referred to as the Rome of the North, bear witness to this boundless power. The famous Porta Nigra, an intriguing blend of defensive structure and palace, opens onto vast thermal baths, an impressive basilica and a beautiful bridge, all masterpieces of stone and precious witnesses to Roman pragmatism and monumentality, unfolding along the famous Roman directional axes: the Cardo and Decumanus, creating a geometric urban plan.
Medieval power
Keen to assert his power, Charlemagne drew inspiration from past splendors to design his imperial architecture. To the ancient basilical plan, and the newly adopted centered plan, Carolingian architecture added a new feature: two perfectly symmetrical chevets housing two choirs. The east choir for secular worship, the west choir for regular worship. The Westwerk, a massive quadrangular structure, is also located to the west of the central nave, and can be identified by its two towers. Ancient materials (columns, capitals) are frequently reused. But Carolingian architecture is most famous for its galleries and tribunes spanning several storeys, its play of arcatures leading to domes and its complex geometric plans. The finest examples of this architecture are the Carolingian Westwerk and civitas at Corvey, and the Palatine Chapel at Aachen Cathedral. Ottonian architecture takes up its elements, while accentuating the quest for harmony and perfection based on the science of proportions, and on the decorative work that can be seen in the red and white bands adorning the semicircular arches, the alternation of pillars and columns designed to break the uniformity of the site, and the superb painted frameworks.St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim is a perfect example. From the 11th century onwards, the first cathedrals were built, transformed by the Salian emperors into instruments of strength against the omnipotence of the papacy, with arcatures, complex structures and imposing towers. Mainz, Speyer and Worms are the finest examples. Gradually, the style became leaner and more expressive, with wooden frameworks giving way to stone vaults offering greater architectural potential. At the end of the Romanesque period, vaults and pillars became ribbed and fluted, making them lighter, sculpted and painted decorations richer and richer, while galleries and apses with windows bathed the whole in bright light. Limburg an der Lahn Cathedral is a superb example of this transition to the style that left its lasting mark on the country: Gothic. This was the time of the cathedral cities, of which Cologne is the greatest representative. With its 5 naves and 7 radiating chapels, it is the symbol of the flamboyant Gothic style. Elsewhere, hall churches developed, with side naves raised to the height of the central nave, creating veritable forests of columns and pillars. The Gothic period also marked the birth of power in large cities. Powerful town halls with crenellated turrets and half-timbered houses with elaborate gables populated the towns that grew up around picturesque labyrinths of narrow streets and cobbled squares, all protected by powerful fortifications. Regensburg and Tübingen have preserved this medieval atmosphere. In northern Germany, the era of Backsteingotik brick Gothic reflects the power of the Teutonic Order on the one hand, and the all-powerful Hanseatic League on the other, offering superb chromatic effects, with the historic city of Lübeck being one of its proudest representatives.
Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism
If you're looking for evidence of the regularity and harmony of Renaissance architecture, you'll need to visit southern Germany, which is more influenced by Italy. The mansions of Augsburg and Aschaffenburg Castle, one of the country's first regular-plan castles, are among the finest examples of this style. The architecture was quite simple compared to the Baroque effervescence that swept through the country, fresh from the ravages of the Thirty Years' War. A theatrical art form par excellence, the Baroque style was striking with its alternating convex and concave forms, optical illusions, twisted columns and stucco and gilded decorations. In Bohemia and Southern Germany, the Italian Guarino Guarini drew inspiration from mathematical precision to create whimsical forms full of dynamism and movement. Johann Balthasar Neumann drew inspiration from this to create the Church of the Fourteen Saints in Würzburg, with its interlocking oval and circular forms. Dominicus Zimmermann pushed the illusion even further in theWies church, whose sober white exterior gave no hint of the enchanting interior. Palaces and castles feature sumptuous multi-flight staircases, spiral staircases, arcaded galleries and painted ceilings. Nymphenburg Palace, with its 600 m-long façade, is a superb example of this Baroque effervescence, as is the sublime Margraves Opera House in Bayreuth, with its tiered bell-shaped hall. This vitality continued with the rococo fashion, whose name recalls the stones adorning the artificial grottoes so popular at the time. During this period, private spaces were favored and overloaded with stylized furnishings and decorations. This marked the advent of pavilions with evocative names like Monbijou in Berlin or Solitude in Stuttgart. This incredible decorum was followed by a classicism based on antique monochromy and linear purity. Monumental porticoed facades and Doric columns adorned the new temples of culture and learning. Leo von Klenze designed the Doric Propylaea in Munich and the Walhalla Temple in Regensburg, a copy of the Parthenon overlooking the Danube. In Berlin, Carl Gotthard Langhans' Brandenburg Gate, a triumphal arch in the Greek repertoire, is another superb example of this return to Antiquity. But the great architect of this period was Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who succeeded in achieving an elegant fusion of antique formal language and functionality. Much of Berlin at the time bears his imprint. This period also saw a revival of landscape architecture, as exemplified by the famous Muskau Park, conceived as a tableau of greenery. Castles and palaces retained a form of classical regularity that blended marvelously with nature, which was left completely free. Later, these antique lines were abandoned in favor of more historicizing styles. Romanticism drew on all historical sources to create a form of idealized national romance. The sublime ruins of medieval castles overlooking the country's valleys are the most obvious examples, as are the grandiose achievements of Ludwig II of Bavaria, whose Neuschwanstein Castle is famous the world over.
Modern effervescence
Jugendstil or German Art Nouveau imagines fluid, sensual forms evoking nature in total, symbolic works of art. Darmstadt's Mathildenhöhe, an astonishing experimental and landscaped ensemble, is one of its major centers. Here, Joseph Maria Olbrich designed the Wedding Tower in red brick clad in blue ceramic, crowned by five rounded elements reminiscent of the fingers of a hand. These organic forms were followed by the pure geometry of the Viennese Secession, which in turn gave rise to the Berlin and Munich Secessions. Inspired by all these movements, Peter Behrens and other artists and architects founded the Deutscher Werkbund. The idea was to take advantage of the benefits of industrialization while preserving traditional craftsmanship. It was in Cologne that the movement imagined its programmatic exhibition, where astonishing buildings sprang from the ground, such as the Maison de Verre and its pointed dome designed by Bruno Taut. This industrial culture culminates in theFagus shoefactory in Alfeld-sur-Leine. Designed by Adolf Meyer and Walter Gropius, it was directly inspired by American industrial architecture, with its load-bearing structure separated from the facade, transformed into a curtain wall with glass corners that lend lightness to the whole. This modernist rigor later became more expressionist. In Hamburg, Fritz Höger designed the Chilehaus, inspired as much by the great Gothic buildings as by transatlantic ships. The architecture of the Bauhaus movement, based on collective work and the contributions of science, is pure, functional and transparent in space, with simple geometric volumes recognized by their flat roofs, their skilful use of concrete, glass and steel, and their constant quest for rationality. The movement's buildings in Dessau are among the most famous representatives of this architectural radicalism. At the same time, large cities such as Berlin and Frankfurt saw the development of the Neues Bauen (New Building) movement. Hans Scharoun, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe imagined housing estates combining functionalism and modernity, with flat roofs, facades in white render or bright colors, and standardized, prefabricated elements. In response to these large-scale developments, other architects imagined units on a human scale, such as the Cité Weissenhof in Stuttgart, a project supervised by Mies van der Rohe. This creative effervescence was to be brought to a halt by Nazi totalitarianism. In architecture, it led to systematic recourse to gigantism and classical models. In Berlin, the New Reich Chancellery stretches over 400 m in length, while in Nuremberg, the Party Congress Esplanade takes on the appearance of a horseshoe-shaped stone folly. But Germania, the megalomaniac project conceived by Albert Speer and Hitler, was relentlessly shelled by the Allies. The country emerged from the war bloodless and in ruins. In Nuremberg, a vast identical reconstruction project mobilized almost 200 architects. Gottfried Böhm, the very first German winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize (the Nobel Prize for architecture!), was one of the great architects of reconstruction, mixing romanticism, modernism and vernacular with science and poetry.
Contemporary triumph
The Cold War was not just a political war, it was also a cultural one, and architecture was a witness to this. In the East, the Soviets set out to erase the Prussian heritage, replacing it with a monumental neoclassical style in which concrete is king, as in the astonishing perspective of Berlin's Karl-Marx Allee. During this troubled period, some architects, notably in Berlin, were able to play with codes and invent new architectural expressions. Mies van der Rohe designed the brutalist contours of the National Galerie, while Hans Scharoun imagined the organic, rounded forms of the Philharmonie. 1972 was an important year for the country, which hosted the Olympic Games in Munich. Shaped by landscape architects, the slag heaps formed by the debris of war became the site of a rediscovered modernity, while at their feet unfurled the Olympic Park, whose stadium bore the mark of Germany's second Pritzker Prize winner, Frei Otto. Renowned for his formal language inspired by nature, his use of textile structures and his work on the development of lightweight load-bearing structures, he designed the stadium roof with its polyester sails stretched over oblique masts. Then it was the turn of the deconstructivists to enter the scene, playing with the idea of making structural elements of glass and steel emerge from walls and roofs, in dialogue with echoes of a pastiched past. This creative vitality continues to this day, with Germany welcoming some of the world's greatest names in architecture. Following in the footsteps of Frank Gehry, who designed the astonishing contours of the Vitra Design Museum here, Zaha Hadid imagined the fire station at the Vitra factory in Weil-on-the-Rhine, with its immense, angular concrete slab serving as a canopy. Berlin, for its part, continues to transform itself under the pencil strokes of the greatest names: jean Nouvel's Galeries Lafayette, all glass and polished steel; Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, all symbolic power, with its alternating solids and voids; Norman Foster's redesigned Reichstag; Potsdamer Platz, with its skyscrapers linked by a canvas designed by Renzo Piano and Helmut Jahn; meinhard von Gerkan's Hauptbahnhof, Europe's largest train station with its 321 m-long glass concourse; the Museum of German History and its spiral staircase designed by Ieoh Ming Pei are all must-sees in the capital. But contemporary masterpieces can be found all over the country: frankfurt's ultramodern towers, designed by Norman Foster and Helmut Jahn, among others; the astonishing geometric volumes of Düsseldorf's new customs district, by Frank Gehry; Hamburg'sElbphilharmonie, whose 110 m height was designed by the masters of pared-down design, Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron; the Showroom, designed by the German architect, Frank Gehry. de Meuron; the BMW Welt Showroom in Munich, whose 180 m-long cloud-shaped roof, covered with 3,660 photovoltaic panels, bears the hallmark of the renowned Coop HimmelBlau agency.. you've got a lot to discover!
