O. M. Ungers
Kosmos der Literatur

“It all comes down to dia­logue in the spaces between art and archi­tec­ture.” – Oswald Math­ias Ungers

Oswald Math­ias Ungers (born 1926) is con­sid­ered one of Germany’s most impor­tant archi­tects and one of the most influ­en­tial inter­na­tion­al archi­tec­tur­al the­o­rists of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. For Ungers, the con­nec­tion to the visu­al arts is of cen­tral impor­tance to archi­tec­ture. He empha­sized: ​“Art and archi­tec­ture spring from the same roots and are char­ac­ter­ized by the same signs and sys­tems. To sep­a­rate them is to destroy their val­ue and oblit­er­ate them.”

Muse­um build­ings such as the Galerie der Gegen­wart in Ham­burg and the Wall­raf-Richartz Muse­um in Cologne, as well as his own res­i­dences, impres­sive­ly embody his con­sis­tent under­stand­ing of archi­tec­ture as an inde­pen­dent art form.

This vol­ume accom­pa­nies the exhi­bi­tion at the Neue Nation­al­ga­lerie in Berlin and, for the first time, explores var­i­ous facets of this the­o­ret­i­cal approach. Using Ungers’ art col­lec­tion, his col­lec­tion of archi­tec­tur­al mod­els, his own hous­es, and his exten­sive library, it exam­ines the close con­nec­tion between his archi­tec­tur­al work and cen­tral themes in art.