Truly, the world is the poorer without this energetic, innovative giant of a man whose spirit can never be vanquished and whose work will live on for future generations to study and appreciate. The detailed trademark drawings would often be propelled straight into a three-dimensional mock-up to support the design campaign that later would be built and eventually become an iconographic architectural symbol of the city in which it was created. Helmut also showed me some of his unique ink sketches that he was known to draw with a Montblanc pen. The transparently engineered composition recalls a raising drawbridge lifting high into the air and inviting visitors inside with an implied upward motion. The project is an exposed, red steel frame structure, which creates an inclined continuous roof plane, the highest point (14 meters/45 feet) culminating above the entrance. Outside his door, in the heart of the studio, he revealed one of his most recent endeavors - a model of the 873-square meter (9400 sf) Pritzker Military Archives & Memorial Park Center, now under construction in Somers, Wisconsin. Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Bangkok, 2006.

Beyond his architecture, I was taken by the boundless energy he had for each commission as well as his enthusiasm for future work. Inside his private office, he took me through models and renderings of recent and upcoming projects. It was a typically hot August day in Chicago, and I had been granted the privilege of spending more than an hour with Helmut in his U.S. While his work speaks for itself in the grand scope of things, it is the personal impression Helmut Jahn made on me in 2019, that I will long remember. Thompson Center in Chicago, One Liberty Place in Philadelphia, Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok, the United Airlines Terminal in Chicago, and Sony Center in Berlin are only five projects that immediately come to mind from a list too long to enumerate here. Characteristic of Helmut Jahn’s work is a celebration of life with a joie de vivre expressed in the harmonious scale, sophisticated tectonics, advanced materials, state-of-the-art engineering, proportional form and distinct attention to detail - all elements of Jahn’s critical design vocabulary, which he exhibited prolifically in the great cities of the world.

Architect helmut jahn