Stuttgart architect and university lecturer Prof. Arno Lederer, founding partner of the architectural firm Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei (LRO), died on January 21, 2023, at the age of 75. We mourn the loss of the creator of our building The Yard at Westfield Hamburg-Überseequartier.
His award-winning buildings helped shape the German architectural landscape. In his architectural language, he showed himself to be unimpressed by trends and focused on considered further development. As a guest speaker, jury member and author, he called for responsibility and attitude and pleaded for more thoughtfulness.
Lederer’s creativity is already shaping the future of Westfield Hamburg-Überseequartier. The Yard building, with its impressively curved archways, will welcome visitors from the waterfront in the future as one of the quarter’s most important landmarks. “A face to the water,” inspired by the Doge’s Palace in Venice, is how Lederer himself described his reinterpretation of the classic Hamburg Kontorhaus.
In 1985, the Stuttgart native co-founded an architectural firm with Icelander Jórunn Ragnarsdóttir, which became Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei (LRO) in 1992 with third partner Marc Oei. Lederer leaves behind a long list of important buildings, such as the Art Museum in Ravensburg, the Historical Museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Volkstheater in Munich.
He passed on his knowledge to many young generations of architects, most recently as a professor at the University of Stuttgart. In an honorary capacity, Arno Lederer campaigned for traditional anthroposophical architecture in many organizations and committees.
We mourn the death of our architect and the loss of an extraordinary talent. Our sympathy goes to his relatives, his friends, his colleagues and partners.
