A conversation with Jürgen Mayer H.

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant German ar­chi­tects of the present day, Jürgen Mayer H. creates build­ings that are often based on three-di­men­sional, organic struc­tures and operate seam­lessly at the in­ter­face where art, design and new tech­nolo­gies meet.

The Stuttgart native is a trav­eller between worlds, whose work can also be found in gal­leries and museums like the MoMA. We spoke with the de­signer, who lives in Berlin, about ar­chi­tec­ture as an ac­ti­va­tor, his first ex­pe­ri­ences with build­ing clients and copying his own work.

Who was your first client?
The first build­ing project I worked on was the Stadthaus Scharn­hauser Park in Os­t­fildern, which we were awarded when we won an in­ter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion.

How were you able to take part in the com­pe­ti­tion, having no pre­vi­ous build­ing pro­jects to use as ref­er­ences?
At the time it was common to de­ter­mine the winners of such com­pe­ti­tions by lot, when you wanted to main­tain more eco­nomic re­la­tions with the ar­chi­tects taking part.

In the 1990s it was not unusual for several hundred ar­chi­tects across Europe to submit designs for this type of com­pe­ti­tion. There were nine set par­tic­i­pants and an ad­di­tional 21 were added to the mix. It worked really simply by fax in those days: I had to send the client my licence as an ar­chi­tect and a de­c­la­ra­tion of in­ter­est, and that was it. And then I was in the running and that’s how I got my first build­ing project.

How would you de­scribe the re­la­tion­ship between the ar­chi­tect and the client?
It really varies. Some­times there is an im­me­di­ate com­plic­ity, where you both want to explore your cu­rios­ity for ar­chi­tec­ture to­gether. And some­times it is a careful process of gaining trust, where you push each other and ul­ti­mately come to­gether over the course of the project as a whole. But in the end there is always a close and in­ten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion that de­vel­ops with the client.

Do you aim high when working with the client?
The goal is always to develop the best project from the sit­u­a­tion at hand: from a design per­spec­tive, from a fi­nan­cial per­spec­tive and also from the knowl­edge we cul­ti­vate. Every build­ing project pre­sents an op­por­tu­nity to develop new design methods and through these, new pro­duc­tion methods. But first and fore­most, the build­ing has to be func­tional, of course, and – through its ar­chi­tec­tural design – be given an in­di­vid­ual ex­pres­sion. It’s a type of trial and error, based on certain pa­ra­me­ters, util­is­ing re­search, but also often steered by in­tu­ition. And the client is the most im­por­tant part of this process.

Looking back, what were your most im­por­tant ex­pe­ri­ences with clients?
For one, the op­por­tu­nity to par­tic­i­pate in the com­pe­ti­tion to design the Stadthaus Scharn­hauser Park in Stuttgart and then con­struct the build­ing – without being able to give the clients an actual build­ing that had been built already as a ref­er­ence. This form of de­mo­c­ra­tic con­tract award­ing set the course for the firm. Then came Seville and the Metropol Parasol project: plan­ning and then ex­e­cut­ing such an es­pe­cially con­tem­po­rary build­ing in the his­toric city centre, among the UNESCO World Her­itage sites and Roman ex­ca­va­tions, was a unique ex­pe­ri­ence. And def­i­nitely Georgia, where we ex­e­cuted small, medium and large pro­jects dotted all over the country, which gave us the op­por­tu­nity to help shape the country’s mod­erni­sa­tion. Ex­pe­ri­enc­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in another culture was prob­a­bly the biggest win.

How did you come to work with the nation of Georgia and its Pres­i­dent Mikheil Saakashvili?
We first came into contact through our Metropol Parasol project in Seville. Georgia wanted to execute a similar cul­tural outdoor museum project in its capital city of Tbilisi. For various reasons, the build­ing was de­signed and con­structed by another ar­chi­tect, but the project de­ci­sion-mak­ers had loved our design and ap­proach so much that it marked the start of a series of pro­jects, like the mo­tor­way rest stop. Within a short period of time we had more and more clients coming to us from Georgia, from private in­di­vid­u­als to com­pa­nies and public in­sti­tu­tions.

How would you de­scribe the Georgia chapter of your career?
It’s not fin­ished yet. There are cur­rently two more mo­tor­way rest stops, a train station and a private home under con­struc­tion. You can really feel how the country is gearing up for the future, re­new­ing its in­fra­struc­ture and cre­at­ing struc­tures that we our­selves take for granted, like su­per­mar­kets, police sta­tions, town halls or air­ports. It’s all ar­chi­tec­ture that con­tributes to how the country func­tions. It must also be said that when we started working in Georgia almost eight years ago, there was in­cred­i­ble pres­sure to renew the in­fra­struc­ture and there was a sense of urgency. These processes have since slowed down some­what.

How dra­mat­i­cally did the Metropol Parasol project change the way your firm was per­ceived?
The project raised our in­ter­na­tional profile: from the sculp­tural un­der­stand­ing of the ar­chi­tec­ture to the use of new ma­te­ri­als and new tech­nolo­gies. But the project also shows how con­tem­po­rary build­ing can re­de­fine public space. It not only creates a frame­work for the urban com­mu­nity, but is also an ac­ti­va­tor. Right in the middle of the city centre.

Do private clients come to you with re­quests to copy one of your pro­jects?
I see it as a com­pli­ment, first of all, and it happens a lot with the Metropol Parasol project. But the most extreme case is the Dupli Casa villa. We get re­quests on an almost monthly basis, from South America and Africa to Aus­tralia. There have also been at­tempts to copy the build­ing without our input – and then we are called in during the con­struc­tion phase with re­quests to help because it didn’t turn out looking like the photos. Right now in Russia there is ac­tu­ally a project being ex­e­cuted that came about from the Dupli Casa project.

Does it bother you, copying your work?
When there is special in­ter­est in one of our build­ings, it shows that the ar­chi­tec­ture speaks to people. Anyway, in the end it is never an exact copy, because the plots them­selves and spatial re­quire­ments are never the same. So we see a process for a new project as a start­ing point, from which the project nat­u­rally con­tin­ues to develop. The ‘design col­lec­tions’ that evolve from this, with dif­fer­ent build­ings that are related but also dif­fer­ent, allow for in­ter­est­ing com­par­isons.

What do you think about the current growing trend of facade com­pe­ti­tions, where the in­ter­nal struc­ture of the build­ing is pre­de­fined?
It depends on the project: each one has its own con­sid­er­a­tions for pos­si­ble design ap­proaches. Some­times it’s the 50-cen­time­tre en­ve­lope and some­times it’s the in­ter­nal lo­gis­tics and or­gan­i­sa­tion of a build­ing: that is the in­di­vid­ual gauge you use to pen­e­trate a build­ing. In Miami we are cur­rently working on a facade for a mul­ti­storey car park in the Design Dis­trict, along­side four other ar­chi­tects. Terry Riley is cu­rat­ing the ‘Collage Garage’, which is now called the ‘Museum Garage’, and every ar­chi­tect in­volved in the project is working on a certain segment of the overall facade. In this case the design logic is not based on the in­ter­nal struc­ture of the build­ing, but rather on the re­la­tion­ship of the dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the facade with each other. We’re really only talking about ap­prox­i­mately one metre of the build­ing’s depth.

Was that also the case for your Rhein 740 res­i­den­tial high-rise project in Düssel­dorf?
The facade is an im­por­tant aspect of the Rhein 740 project. But I think in this par­tic­u­lar process, it was our treat­ment of the volume re­quired by the com­pe­ti­tion client that made the dif­fer­ence, because the volume and the way the build­ing struc­ture is tiered are crucial due to the noise levels at the site. To get the pre­scribed volume a bit slimmer and make it more ver­ti­cal, we pro­posed di­vid­ing the build­ing struc­ture into three, with a nod towards the Dreis­cheiben­haus in Düssel­dorf.

And how did you handle the facade?
The plot is sit­u­ated in a very special but also prob­lem­atic lo­ca­tion: on the banks of the River Rhine, but also right on an ar­te­r­ial road going into the city centre. For this reason, we de­vel­oped a type of acoustic white noise facade, that wraps around the build­ing and catches and absorbs sound. The facade struc­ture is more closed and ab­sorbent on the north side facing the street, while it is open and more in­tri­cate at the front, facing the Rhine. It still pro­vides suf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion from wind and weather here, but at the same time creates a pleas­antly in­ti­mate en­vi­ron­ment on the bal­conies and ter­races.