The central Mosque of the Turkish-Islamic Union in Koln-Ehrenfeld has given us one of the most vigorously discussed German building projects of the past 10 years. With this spectacular domed structure, Paul Bohm, the youngest son of Pritzker Prize-winner Gottfried Bohm and grandchild of Dominikus Bohm, has successfully introduced the Osman mosque typus into the modern age. The dome and minaret provide the Turkish / Islamic community with visual identification points. At the same time, this shell-construction structure is broken up into individual segments in a manner that opens it up to both the neighbourhood and the world. Containing conference halls, rooms for community use, a bazaar, a library and a museum, the complex is intended to convey to the surrounding area a message of retained ties to the historical country of origin coupled with acceptance and integration into the new homeland, and a willingness to engage in dialogue. Up to now the mosque represents the high point of the architectural career of Paul Bohm, who was born in 1959 and who is teaching at the Fachhochschule Koln. His work encompasses a multitude of exciting projects and realized buildings, including cultural buildings, university buildings, administration buildings and residential buildings. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that an architect who comes from a family of church builders should have added an impressive religious structure to oeuvre. St. Theodor in Koln-Vingst is a centralplan building that possesses a coherent atmosphere suited to contemplation whilst, at the same time, opening itself to a part of the city that suffers from social problems. Figures who have played a significant role in Paul Bohm's professional development include Tadao Ando, the master of velvetsmooth concrete, Oswald Mathias Ungers, the great lover of geometry, and Peter Zumthor, the essentialist of his generation. Like these three figures, the architects who Bohm worked with prior to founding his own firm in 2001, all espoused very different philosophies of architecture: Otto Steidle, Anton Schweighofer, Richard Meier. Paul Bohm does, of course, also owe a debt to the traditions of the family of architects that he comes from--a tradition that he continues in his own individual way.
About the Author: Wolfgang Pehnt, who studied German literature, art history and philosophy in Marburg, Munich and Frankfurt am Main, has produced seminal works on the history of German architecture, including Expressionist Architecture and Deutsche Architektur seit 1900, and also a number of monographs on individual architects, including Gottfried Bohm, Hans Poelzig, Rudolf Schwarz and Karljosef Schattner. From 1995 to 2009, he lectured on architectural history at the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum.