Word: jahn
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Some of the 1986 arches allude explicitly to that extravagant era when follies proliferated; some are simply giddy. Their very existence seems fair evidence that a new gilded age is under way. For even though the seven architects (Charles Moore, Cesar Pelli, Stanley Tigerman, Michael Graves, Helmut Jahn and Texans Boone Powell and Eugene Aubry) worked for free, the arches cost $35,000 to $70,000 apiece; the budgets had been $25,000. Fortunately for Galvestonians, the project has deep-pocket private patrons...
Trying to limit the damage, the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl notified NATO allies of the security breach, while the Interior Ministry began an investigation. So far, politicians have refrained from blaming Kohl, and his government does not appear to be in immediate political danger. Gerhard Jahn, a member of parliament from the opposition Social Democratic Party, deplored the defection but added that he believed the government "doesn't want to hide anything...
...failure to blend with its neighbors, especially the colonnaded City/County Building, built in 1911, and the Richard J. Daley Center, a Miesian steel high-rise completed in 1965. They also charge that it is too frivolous for a government office. Although its inverted-bowl silhouette evokes the traditional rotunda, Jahn has transcended the two styles that dress most government structures: neoclassicism, with its air of judicious civic doings, and modernism, with its sober grids that speak of rectitude and rationality...
...results are mixed. Jahn's freewheeling sense of fun threatens to trivialize the earnest symbol of open government that he sees embodied in the luminous atrium, with its office tiers open to view. The free-flowing work space is rarely impeded by walls or doors; at one time, he even had hoped to leave visible the machinery of the escalators. Jahn also sees a democratic statement in his plaza and concourse, where a theater, shops and restaurants will bring rental income to the state while ensuring that this is a government office center that goes on living after...
Even some who admire Jahn's use of form wince at the materials, like the strips of aluminum and the tacky-looking colored panels, "popular" elements that confound his gestures toward the ideal. Jahn protests descriptions like "cheap" and "glitzy." "The materials look unusual, but they are not cheap," he says. "This is the type of building that takes time to digest and to understand." Indeed, the architect feels confident that he has designed a landmark. "Just wait 20 years," he grins. "Someone will try to replace the blue panels, and it won't be allowed...