The poetic Brutalism of Gottfried Böhm

Sharp-edged, pointed, Brutalist: Gottfried Böhm's Mary Queen of Peace pilgrimage church in Neviges near Dusseldorf resembles a jagged mountain. He is the only German to have won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, the "Nobel Prize for Architects," awarded in 1986 for this tour de force. It is typical of Böhm's idiosyncratic and highly sculptural concrete, steel and glass buildings.

As with the pilgrimage church in Neviges, Gottfried Böhm's town hall in Bensberg near Cologne is a walk-in sculpture made entirely of exposed concrete. The bizarre staircase tower rises up into the sky, while Böhm's rhythmic design language is again full of oblique angles and unexpected perspectives.

The cathedral city of Cologne and its history have shaped the work of Böhm, who built his first independent building there in 1949 — the "Madonna in the Ruins" chapel on the site of the bombed of St. Kolumba, destroyed in World War II. In 1948, Böhm married the architect Elisabeth Haggenmüller. They had four sons; three of them, Stephan, Peter and Paul, continue the architectural tradition.

Designed in the 1960s, the town hall in Bensberg is arranged in a ring. As with many of Gottfried Böhm's designs, several buildings are grouped around a square that is a ruin of a medieval castle. The Bethanien Children's Village (pictured) in Bergisch Gladbach-Refrath, built in 1968, also follows this pattern.

The Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam, which was built in 2006, has five stories. The curved, graceful cantilevered roofs organically stretch towards the Havel River. Again, a modernist mix of concrete, glass and steel dominates. Gottfried Böhm even integrated a heritage-listed gasometer into the building. This temple of performance arts is pure poetry.

From antiquity until today, buildings have always reflected the zeitgeist. They visually manifest the abstract thoughts that impact our cultures. For visionaries like Gottfried Böhm, who used to sketch church windows while sitting in his father's office as a child, lending meaning to form sometimes meant taking a leap of faith. Pictured above at the age of 95, Böhm was still taking regular swims.

Gottfried Böhm's sons also work as architects. Peter Böhm has designed the postmodernist University of Television and Film in Munich, in which the technical rooms and studios are located in the monolithic concrete basement. The austere facade made of concrete and glass not only houses the work of new film talents, but also the State Museum of Egyptian Art.

Consisting of a spectacular round structure and a long orthogonal building, there is plenty of spatial tension at the training center for the Cologne Fire Department. Stephan Böhm was responsible for the design, which was completed in 2005. The eldest of Gottfried Böhm's four sons, he has been involved in architectural projects as far afield as China.

This colossus of steel, concrete, glass, and wood rises majestically over Cologne. But Germany's largest mosque, designed by Paul Böhm, wasn't completed until 2011 following a political row and then legal strife. With prayer rooms, a library, offices and even a bazaar, the house of worship is both a cultural and spiritual center for Muslims in Germany.

Gottfried Böhm is indisputably one of Germany's most significant architects. As the son of a recognized church builder, Böhm is now the patriarch of the family of designers. However, his sons have long since stepped out of their father's shadow and established themselves. An influential architect herself, Elisabeth Böhm (pictured right) passed away in 2012. Her centenarian husband lives on.