Helmut Jahn

Born: 1940

Architect

Helmut Jahn was born in Nuremberg in southern Germany. After attending the Technische Hochschule of Munich from 1960 to 1965, he emigrated to Chicago in 1966 to study architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He studied according to a curriculum designed by famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and learned the language and techniques of the International Style and Modernist Aesthetic. In 1967 Jahn was hired by the Chicago architectural firm C.F. Murphy Associates to work on the Miesian design for McCormick Place (1968–71) in Chicago. The firm was later renamed Murphy/Jahn, with Jahn becoming its president and CEO in 1983.

Jahn’s contemporary buildings shape many cities in Germany and the US. Some of his best-known creations are the Sony Center on the rebuilt Potsdamer Platz in the center of Germany’s capital Berlin; the One Liberty Place - the tallest building in Philadelphia; and the Twenty-First-Century Tower in Shanghai. He is also known for designing the Messeturm (trade fair tower) in Frankfurt, Germany.

In 1991 Jahn was chosen by the AIA as one of the Ten Most Influential Living American Architects.

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