Prof. Kathleen James-Chakraborty

The Stuttgart Train Station is one of the most important German buildings of its day.  The entire building is important as it was conceived as a unified whole.  While improving local train networks is important, it should be able to accomplish this, as has been done with St. Pancras in London, without harming the city's architectural heritage.  

As an American, I also appreciate the degree, invisible to most Germans, to which Paul Bonatz drew upon American precedents we continue to cherish, most particularly the work of Henry Hobson Richardson, whose use of geological metaphors to convey permanence influenced a generation of European National Romanticists, as well as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.

And as a scholar who has written two books and many articles on Erich Mendelsohn, I honor him for befriending that architect and ensuring that his Schocken Store was built.  Now we must work to make sure that the center of Stuttgart does not lose its other most important structure from these years.