Christian Martin Goldbeck was born on February 21, 1974 in Meschede, Germany. He studied production design at the Konrad Wolf Academy for Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg and graduated from the University of East London, School of Architecture with a B.A. in Architecture. His work as an art director includes films such as Detlev Buck's "Liebesluder" ("Bundle of Joy", 2000) and Stefan Ruzowitzky's "Anatomie 2" ("Antibodies", 2002). As a production designer, he was responsible for the set design of "Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" ("The Edukators", 2004, directed by Hans Weingartner) and "Alles auf Zucker" ("Go for Zucker", 2005, directed by Dani Levy), for which he was nominated for the German Film Award in 2005. 

After "Lichter" ("Distant Lights", 2003), "Requiem" (2006) was his second collaboration with director Hans-Christian Schmid. Goldbeck was a nominee for the German Film Award in 2006 for this work, as well as for Maria Schrader's "Liebesleben" ("Love Life") in 2008. Goldbeck also created the production design for Schmid's political thriller "Sturm" ("Storm"). He received another nomination for the German Film Award in 2009 for Marco Kreuzpaintner's adaptation of Otfried Preußler's "Krabat". 

Goldbeck was supervising art director on Stephen Daldry's American-German co-production "Der Vorleser" ("The Reader"). After Baran Bo Odar's "Das letzte Schweigen" ("The Silence"), he created the production design for Andres Veiel's history of the Pre-RAF, "Wer wenn nicht wir" ("If not Us, Who?"), for which he received his fifth nomination for the German Film Award in 2011. Following this, he worked on Hans-Christian Schmid's "Was bleibt" ("Home for the Weekend", 2012) and Oliver Ziegenbalg's adaptation of Vladimir Kaminer's novel "Russendisko" (2012). For the production design of Alain Gsponer's remake of "Heidi" (2015), Goldbeck aimed for a realistic, raw depiction of mountain farming life, in contrast to 'clean' earlier adaptations. 

Goldbeck's sixth nomination for the German Film Award followed in 2016 for Wolfgang Becker's art scene satire "Ich und Kaminski" ("Me and Kaminski").

After that, he continued to be responsible for the set design of productions by renowned directors. These include Stefan Ruzowitzky and Michael Krummenacher's apocalyptic series "8 Tage" ("8 Days"), which premiered at the Berlinale in 2019 and was then broadcast on Sky, Karoline Herfurth's tragicomic action film "Sweethearts" (2019) and her episodic drama "Wunderschön" (2020), as well as Bora Dagtekin's box office success "Das perfekte Geheimnis" ("The Perfect Secret"), which takes place in a single studio apartment.

Christian Goldbeck received his most important award in March 2023, when he won an Oscar® at the 95th Academy Awards for his production design of "Im Westen nichts Neues" ("All Quiet on the Western Front"). The new screen adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's anti-war novel, directed by Edward Berger, which had previously won seven BAFTAs in London (Goldbeck was nominated but didn't win), was nominated for nine of the coveted golden trophies in Hollywood and won in three categories in addition to Best Production Design: Best International Film, Best Original Score (Volker Bertelmann aka Hauschka) and Best Cinematography (James Friend).