Sharp-edged, pointed, Brutalist: Gottfried Böhm's Mary Queen of Peace pilgrimage church in Neviges near Dusseldorf resembles a jagged mountain. He is the only German to have won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, the "Nobel Prize for Architects," awarded in 1986 for this tour de force. It is typical of Böhm's idiosyncratic and highly sculptural concrete, steel and glass buildings.

As with the pilgrimage church in Neviges, Gottfried Böhm's town hall in Bensberg near Cologne is a walk-in sculpture made entirely of exposed concrete. The bizarre staircase tower rises up into the sky, while Böhm's rhythmic design language is again full of oblique angles and unexpected perspectives.

The cathedral city of Cologne and its history have shaped the work of Böhm, who built his first independent building there in 1949 — the "Madonna in the Ruins" chapel on the site of the bombed of St. Kolumba, destroyed in World War II. In 1948, Böhm married the architect Elisabeth Haggenmüller. They had four sons; three of them, Stephan, Peter and Paul, continue the architectural tradition.

Designed in the 1960s, the town hall in Bensberg is arranged in a ring. As with many of Gottfried Böhm's designs, several buildings are grouped around a square that is a ruin of a medieval castle. The Bethanien Children's Village (pictured) in Bergisch Gladbach-Refrath, built in 1968, also follows this pattern.

The Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam, which was built in 2006, has five stories. The curved, graceful cantilevered roofs organically stretch towards the Havel River. Again, a modernist mix of concrete, glass and steel dominates. Gottfried Böhm even integrated a heritage-listed gasometer into the building. This temple of performance arts is pure poetry.

From antiquity until today, buildings have always reflected the zeitgeist. They visually manifest the abstract thoughts that impact our cultures. For visionaries like Gottfried Böhm, who used to sketch church windows while sitting in his father's office as a child, lending meaning to form sometimes meant taking a leap of faith. Pictured above at the age of 95, Böhm was still taking regular swims.

Gottfried Böhm's sons also work as architects. Peter Böhm has designed the postmodernist University of Television and Film in Munich, in which the technical rooms and studios are located in the monolithic concrete basement. The austere facade made of concrete and glass not only houses the work of new film talents, but also the State Museum of Egyptian Art.

Consisting of a spectacular round structure and a long orthogonal building, there is plenty of spatial tension at the training center for the Cologne Fire Department. Stephan Böhm was responsible for the design, which was completed in 2005. The eldest of Gottfried Böhm's four sons, he has been involved in architectural projects as far afield as China.

This colossus of steel, concrete, glass, and wood rises majestically over Cologne. But Germany's largest mosque, designed by Paul Böhm, wasn't completed until 2011 following a political row and then legal strife. With prayer rooms, a library, offices and even a bazaar, the house of worship is both a cultural and spiritual center for Muslims in Germany.

Gottfried Böhm is indisputably one of Germany's most significant architects. As the son of a recognized church builder, Böhm is now the patriarch of the family of designers. However, his sons have long since stepped out of their father's shadow and established themselves. An influential architect herself, Elisabeth Böhm (pictured right) passed away in 2012. Her centenarian husband lives on.

Pictured upon its opening in 1968, and fronted by a sculpture by Henry Moore, the Neue Nationalgalerie soon became an icon of modernist architecture. Former Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe then lived in the US, making this his only postwar building in Europe. The museum houses an extensive collection of 20th-century art masterpieces, and was shut in 2015 for an extensive refurbishment.

Begun in 2015, the meticulous renovation of the Neue Nationalgalerie was undertaken by David Chipperfield Architects, also behind the restoration of the Neues Museum in the German capital. Learning from the refurbishment of other Mies buildings in the US, the original design and materials were preserved as much as possible, despite the building having been stripped to its core.

The heritage-listed museum has been completely renewed inside and out, but without compromising the iconic structure's original appearance. Roughly 35,000 original building components were restored or modified to contemporary standards and then returned to their exact original position. New features include air conditioning, a cafe and museum shop, and improved access for people with disabilities.

The museum's collection includes many 20th-century masterpieces, and a selection of 250 artworks are part of an exhibition now opening, "The Art of Society, 1900 – 1945." Among them is "The Skat Players" by Otto Dix, from 1920. The classic Dadaist collage dwells on the carnage of World War I, the faces of the card-playing soldiers having been horribly disfigured in battle.

Another exhibition at the reopened museum is dedicated to Alexander Calder (1898 – 1976). The US modernist sculptor is already closely associated with the museum, as "Têtes et Queue" (1965) — which is now one of his best-known monumental public sculptures — was installed at the Neue Nationalgalerie for the inauguration of Mies' temple of art.

Back in 2005, Italian conceptual artist Vanessa Beecroft created one of the most infamous performances within the vast glass Neue Nationalgalerie atrium. Featuring 100 women aged between 18 and 65 wearing nothing but see-through pantyhose, "VB55" was sold as three photographic prints and constitutes one of the most seminal images of artistic invention within Mies' grand art house.

German band Kraftwerk performed their piece "Radioactivity" during a concert at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in January 6, 2015, soon before it shut for renovations. The electronic music pioneers kicked off eight nights of concerts with a multimedia performance of their classic albums, including "Autobahn."

Gerhard Richter’s four-part monumental work "Birkenau," based on photographs secretly taken by a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in August 1944, will be presented at the newly renovated Neue Nationalgalerie from 2023. The famed artist (seen with the works above in Baden-Baden in 2016), never wanted his "Birkenau" series to land on the art market.

Gerhard Richter's "Birkenau" series will be followed by 100 other works from the artist's foundation at the Neue Nationalgalerie. But after 2026 they will move next door to a sister gallery now under construction, the much-anticipated Museum der Moderne (pictured). Here, Richter will join select artists including Rebecca Horn and Joseph Beuys to have a dedicated exhibition floor.

After completing the €110 million ($133 million) overhaul, David Chipperfield Architects symbolically handed over the building keys to the federal organization managing the museum, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, on April 29. The public now again has the pleasure of looking out from the renewed museum towards Potsdamer Platz from August, and to view its modern masterpieces.