“I’m delighted to affirm,” wrote architect Friedrich Wilhelm Kraemer, one of the founders of the so-called Braunschweig School, to Heinrich Heidersberger on January 15, 1953, “that the photographs you produced of my projects and completed buildings represent artistic works that typical photographic reproductions cannot rival.” It thus comes as no surprise that Kraemer also called on the photographer he worked most intensively with to document the bold, domed building he had designed for the 100th anniversary of the Farbwerke Höchst AG, which was located in Frankfurt’s Höchst district. 

No other photograph of the multipurpose Jahrhunderthalle—also known as the Feierabendhaus, its original, functional moniker—has been reproduced as often as the one Heidersberger took immediately after its inauguration in January 1963. Strictly speaking, it can be called a photograph but is in actuality a montage: the original image features the mirror-smooth surface of the water reflecting the spherical dome in a way that almost forms a circle—the geometric shape essential to the architect’s design of the multi-purpose building.