Helmut Jahn, famed architect who designed Kansas City arena, killed in Chicago bike accident
Helmut Jahn, a prominent German architect who originally designed Kansas City’s Kemper Arena, now known as Hy-Vee Arena, was killed this weekend while riding a bicycle outside of Chicago.
Jahn, 81, was struck Saturday afternoon while riding in Campton Hills, about 55 miles west of Chicago, The Associated Press reported. Jahn failed to stop at a stop sign at an intersection and was struck by the two vehicles, headed in opposite directions, police said.
The architect designed Kemper Arena in the 1970s. Exterior aspects of the building were “widely admired” and won the architecture profession’s top honor in 1976, two years after it opened in Kansas City’s historic West Bottoms, according to Star archives.
Jahn previously told The Star that the arena has “what we call almost a civic spirit that has a distinctive and recognizable look that becomes an image for the city.”
In 2016, the arena won a spot on the National Register of Historic Places because of its significance in local Kansas City cultural history.
A Star columnist two years earlier wrote that the building serves as a “kind of modern-American equivalent of the ancient Roman arena, versions of which still dot European landscapes as ruins or revived gathering places.”
Kemper Arena underwent a multi-million dollar renovation and in 2018 reopened as Hy-Vee Arena with major renovations to serve as a youth and adult sports facility.
Over the weekend, Jahn was pronounced dead at the scene of the Campton Hills accident. Authorities say the driver of one of the vehicles that struck Jahn was taken to a hospital for treatment of non-life threatening injuries.
Jahn was born in Germany in 1940 and graduated from Technische Hochschule in Munich, according to a profile posted on his firm’s website. He moved to Chicago in 1966 to study under legendary architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a creator of modernist architecture, at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Jahn’s professional career began in 1967 when he joined CF Murphy Associates, which later became Murphy/Jahn. He worked on several major projects, including Chicago’s McCormick Place and the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare International Airport, which includes a walkway famous for its colorful lighting. He also had a hand in the design of the J Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Jahn’s work internationally includes the Sony Center in Berlin and the Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
