Design: Basso Profundo and a Bit Wild !

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During the past decade, his work has become coherent and confident again, partly by means of a lightly worn classicism. For the Zueblin construction company's new headquarters outside Stuttgart, he has produced an improbable but marvelous synthesis. A kind of oversize trompe l'oeil portcullis, Zueblin House is monumental and yet entirely permeable, lucid but not glib. The clear, simple axes and pitched-roof profile are classical, and the expansive ectoskeletal shed seems snatched from some 19th century dream of the 20th. The building's priapic pivot alludes to Bohm's own pioneering work: the central spiraling stair could be an ancestor or descendant of the tower at Bensberg.

Bohm practiced all the post-modernist tenets long before they were preached, yet his buildings provide none of the easy reassurance of neat taxonomy. His work has evolved continually, but not in response to shifts in fashion or doctrine. Like Finland's Alvar Aalto, Bohm invented his own humane, smart architectural dialect, and then waited patiently for the rest of the world to learn it.