Opus 80

For the Cologne architect Oswald Mathias Ungers (1926–2007), owner of a famous collection of books on architecture, who also repeatedly addressed the theoretical aspects of building, the construction of his own house, in 1958/59, was more than a private adventure. For him it meant a chance to gain spatial experience and explore what was possible. It was a laboratory, »a little universe«, »a piece of world«. Three decades later, Ungers expanded the cataract of forms of his first home by adding a geometrically strict cube, intended to house his library. The shock aesthetics of the early work had evolved into the rigorous abstractness of his late work.

Architectural historian Wolfgang Pehnt has published monographs about German architecture since 1900 and about Expressionist architecture, but he has also written about numerous individual œuvres. He formerly taught at the Ruhruniversität Bochum.