Hans Scharoun

Bernhard Hans Henry Scharoun (20 September 1893 – 25 November 1972) was a German architect best known for designing the Berlin Philharmonic concert hall and the Schminke House in Löbau, Saxony. He was an important exponent of organic and expressionist architecture.

Scharoun was born in Bremen, German Empire. After passing his Abitur in Bremerhaven in 1912, Scharoun studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin until 1914 (at the time called Königliche Technische Hochschule, the Royal Technical University of Berlin), but he did not complete his studies. He had already shown an interest in architecture during his school years. At the age of 16 he drafted his first designs, and at 18 he entered for the first time an architectural competition for the modernisation of a church in Bremerhaven.

In 1914 he volunteered to serve in the First World War. Paul Kruchen, his mentor from his time in Berlin, had asked him to assist in a reconstruction program for East Prussia. In 1919, after the war, Scharoun assumed responsibility for its office as a freelance architect in Breslau (Wrocław). There and in Insterburg (Chernyakhovsk), he realised numerous projects and organised art exhibitions, such as the first exhibition of the expressionist group of artists, Die Brücke, in East Prussia.

He received a professorship at the Staatliche Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe Breslau (Breslau Academy for Arts and Crafts) where he taught until its closure in 1932. In 1919 he had joined Bruno Taut's expressionist architects group the Glass Chain. In 1926 he entered the architects association Der Ring. In 1927 Scharoun built a house in the Stuttgart Weissenhof Estate. He had responsibility at the end of the twenties for the development plan of a large housing estate, Siemensstadt, in Berlin. Hugo Häring's theory of the new building inspired Scharoun in a new architectural direction that departed from rationalism and from preformulated schemata, in order to develop buildings starting in each case from a unique functional character. The organisation of social living space played a central role.

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