Fritz Auer turns 90

„Architecture is my life and my lifeblood, the most exciting thing I can imagine.“ (Fritz Auer)

On 24 June 2023, the founder of the architecture firm Auer Weber will celebrate his 90th birthday. We congratulate him from the bottom of our hearts and wish him all the best for the years to come!

Prof. Fritz Auer was born in Tübingen in 1933 and studied architecture at the TH Stuttgart and at the Cranbrook Academy of Arts in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (USA), graduating in Stuttgart in 1962. During his studies and subsequently until 1965, he worked for Behnisch and Lambart in Stuttgart and in 1965 became a partner in the office of Behnisch & Partner. In 1980, Fritz Auer and Carlo Weber broke away from the partnership and jointly founded their own office in Stuttgart, Auer+Weber+Architekten, marking the beginning of several decades of successful activity by the office at its two locations in Stuttgart and Munich. Since 2006, the company has been managed by Moritz Auer, Philipp Auer, Jörn Scholz, Achim Söding and Stephan Suxdorf.

„Buildings should remain open to change, to interpretations and to users. We want buildings that can adapt to life...“

Fritz Auer has always focused on the construction task itself, as well as on the conditions and possibilities of the location in which a building is created, involving all stakeholders in the conception and realisation of each project, and this approach still shapes the attitude of the office today.

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games and thus also of the buildings closely associated with them as well as the creation of the Olympic Park. The Olympic buildings with their striking tent roofs, for which Fritz Auer was largely responsible, inevitably rank among his major works, alongside numerous other buildings subsequently created in his office which won many prestigious architectural awards.

In addition to his passion for creative architectural design and wide-ranging building tasks, Fritz Auer is equally concerned with the communication of the latter, as can be seen in his many years of teaching, and the office’snumerous publications and exhibitions.

From 1985 to 2001, Fritz Auer taught architecture in Munich and Stuttgart, and since 1993 he has been a member of the Academy of Arts. In 2014, he was awarded the Leo von Klenze Medal by the Bavarian State Government.

His pleasure in talking about architecture is also reflected in his publications. His most recent was "Ein Zeltdach für München. Die Verwirklichung einer Idee für Olympia 1972" ("A tent roof for Munich. The realisation of an idea for the 1972 Olympic Games"), published in 2022.

To mark his 90th birthday, two new works will be published this autumn that use personal notes, diary entries, and letters to provide insights into his life as an architect and describe his life journey. Both books will be presented by Fritz Auer at two lecture events in Stuttgart and Munich, scheduled for this autumn.

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Photos: 

Alessandra Schellnegger/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo 

saai | Archiv für Architektur und Ingenieurbau, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Werkarchiv Günter Behnisch & Partner