Is this the most surprising restaurant in the world? Architectural marvel – in an industrial area in Leipzig | Build

pErected among old brick buildings in an industrial neighborhood in Leipzig, eastern Germany, a giant white ball appears to hover over the corner of a former boiler house. Is it a giant golf ball? Alien spacecraft? Fallen planet?

Measuring twelve meters in diameter, the Niemeyer Ball is the final design of the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and perhaps the most surprising creation by a visionary who valued a sense of modernity in art above all else. The result is enchanting buildings that seem at once space-age and out of this world. The Sphere is like a vision from the future, projected among used car dealerships and construction equipment rental outlets, in a working-class neighborhood that few tourists will pass through by design.

The Sphere has only been open since June 2020, when its arrival was barely noticed due to Covid, but the journey from concept to opening has taken two decades. Throughout the construction process, photographer Margaret Hope documented the various stages of construction. Spirit of Past and Future, an exhibition of her shots, has opened in the building, also featuring works by Armenian artist Noward Yerkanian.

This exhibition tells the story of Modernist architecture, including artistic photographs of Bauhaus structures, which Niemeyer found plinth-based, and buildings designed by Le Corbusier, who employed the young, not yet famous, Brazilian architect as a draftsman early in his career. The Niemeyer Sphere crowns that career.

Her story It began in 1994, when publicly owned companies in East Germany were awarded to private buyers. West German businessman Ludwig Kuhne purchased a heavy machinery factory for a nominal fee of one German mark. He changed his name to Techne Sphere.

“We had this very good cook in the workers’ canteen,” Kuehne says. “It was always clear to me that it needed a space where we could organize events and serve more refined dishes.” Kuhne envisioned a restaurant on the roof of the two-story canteen, which could use existing kitchen facilities for cooking and washing.

In 2007, Kuehne took a business trip to Brazil, where he fell in love with Niemeyer’s enchanting buildings in Brasilia—from the Palace of Dawn, the president’s modernist waterfront residence, to the Brasilia Cathedral, a crown-shaped concrete and glass marvel that seems to reach up to the sky. Four years later, Kuhne wrote a letter to Niemeyer and returned to Brazil to meet the architect in person. Upon his return, he asked Tibor Herzigkeit – the chef and owner of the cafeteria – to commit to staying for at least another 10 years. Hertzjeket agreed.

Niemeyer was 103 years old when he made his first diagram, a round sphere with windows at the top and bottom. When he died a year later, in 2012, he had not finalized the design, but he left behind a lot of material. “He had to be true to his soul,” Kuehne says. “It’s a great honor to have such a beautiful drawing, as a small company that only has old decks to play with. I felt really compelled to do it because of that.”

To flesh out the original concept, Kuhne and executive architect Harald Kern brought in Jair Valera, who had served as Niemeyer’s right-hand man for decades. After further planning, testing and hiring the right companies, they broke ground in 2017. The structural engineering, construction and materials each presented their own challenges, but the southwest-facing windows presented a major dilemma. Koehne wanted the space to be aesthetically pleasing and physically comfortable, from the light to the ambiance to the temperature. “The fear of overheating in the summer was very high,” Kern says. The team sought “invisible shading that was in keeping with Niemeyer’s geometry.”

Merck, the company behind the windows, developed the technology while the rest of the project was unfolding. Their liquid crystal glass wasn’t ready until 2019, at which point the company individually manufactured each of the 144 unique triangular panels, which can, says Kern, be darkened from “a nice, neutral soft gray to an almost inky black.”

In his acceptance speech for the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1988, Niemeyer said: “The interest in beauty, the love of imagination, and the ever-present element of surprise bear witness to the fact that today’s architecture is not a small craft bound by straight rules, but imbued with technology: light, innovative and unconstrained.”

Challenging the wisdom that buildings should operate like machines, Niemeyer pioneered the use of curves and rounded shapes, inspired by the natural surroundings. The interior of the circular cathedral, which seats 4,000 people, has 16 white concrete columns that curve inward and then outward, holding up a glass roof.

Throughout his career, concrete and glass remained Niemeyer’s signature materials: stained glass windows fill the spaces between columns in river-like expanses of blue and green, flanked by panels in lighter shades. Despite the weight of these materials, Niemeyer consistently produced the illusion of lightness or even buoyancy.

The Niemeyer Sphere follows this tradition: white, dark concrete windows by day, with brightly lit windows against the shadowy concrete at night. The opaque properties of the glass also protect against glare. “It’s like wearable sunglasses,” Kuehne says. “As the eyes adjust to the relative darkness of the façade, and the pupils open a little, you see things in the clouds that you’ve never seen before. That’s part of the experience of spending an evening dining here. You really experience the sky.”

Niemeyer was always toying with new technologies, as when he built the Opera do Berco Arboretum in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1930s with panels that could move horizontally to open on cold days, to let in sunlight, and close in midsummer, to keep it out. Valera and Kern believe Niemeyer liked these liquid crystals, which offer much the same function in a sleeker design.

In addition to Sphere, the factory complex houses two other art galleries in other buildings and occasionally hosts outdoor concerts. The opening ceremony of the Niemeyer Sphere included a performance by the cello suite of Johann Sebastian Bach, arguably the city’s most famous citizen.

Inside, the concrete and glass sphere consists of three levels. The lower part that is not accessible to guests is the technical area. Visitors enter the Sphere on the mezzanine level and enter the bar, which serves kombucha and gin. The curved window slopes down to the floor, with those triangular glass panels suitably darkened by a digital device — the same technology used on modern airplanes instead of curtains.

Upstairs, pampered guests gather in cushioned designer chairs to enjoy a drink while looking out over the rooftops. The interior wall displays a drawing of Niemeyer, red lines on a light background, the kind of flourishes the architect added to buildings throughout his career. This, his latest project, brings together all of his artistic interests, from curves to surprise.

“In this project, Oscar was looking for simplification,” Valera said at the opening. “This simplification arises not from a reduction of elements, but from the pursuit of extraordinary elegance and lightness – hallmarks of his work.”