1923 - 2013

After completing his high-school studies in 1942, Ulrich Conrads was sent to the trenches, where we was wounded several times and fought until Germany’s surrender. After the war he completed his training at the Marburg Institute of Art History, where he studied archaeology, literature, philosophy, sociology and drama, and where he defended his doctoral thesis on the representation of demons in French churches during the 12th cenury. Soon he began working at several German architectural publications, tracing a solid professional career that made him editor-in-chief of Bauwelt in 1957, a position he held for over thirty years until being named director of the magazine in 1988, thus becoming one of the leading architecture critics in Germany. Conrads promoted modern architectural theory through series like Bauwelt Fundamente and through his own books, some as influential as Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture (still a reference today) and Architektur: Spielraum für Leben, an appealing fusion of images and texts that, in 1977, defended the open participation of citizens in public spaces.