Josef Paul Kleihues (1933–2004) was a German architect best known for decades of work on the "critical reconstruction" of Berlin; his approach has been called "poetic rationalist". Born in Rheine, he studied in Stuttgart and Berlin and founded his own practice in 1962. His Block 270 in Berlin-Wedding (1971) revived the traditional Berlin city block, and as director of the International Building Exhibition Berlin (IBA) from 1979 to 1987 he promoted critical reconstruction. Museums, from the Sprengel Museum in Hanover to the Museum of Prehistory in Frankfurt, brought him international recognition, and he chaired the jury that chose Daniel Libeskind for the Jewish Museum Berlin.
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The Kant-Dreieck in Berlin (1994), an office building he won in a 1986 competition, carries on its roof a riveted sheet-metal sail that turns in the wind. He converted the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (1996), a 19th-century railway terminus, into a museum of contemporary art. For the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (1996) he was chosen after a 12-month search through more than 200 nominations; the five-storey building of Indiana limestone and hand-cast aluminium panels gave the museum seven times its former gallery space.
