A conversation with Wolfram Putz from Graft

Ar­chi­tec­tural firms with po­lar­is­ing views? In Germany that’s cer­tainly Graft of Berlin. The pro­jects they have ex­e­cuted around the world and their ex­pres­sive ap­proach to design have not only brought them no­to­ri­ety amongst ar­chi­tec­tural pro­fes­sion­als, but have also im­pressed layper­sons. Now they’ve de­signed a door handle col­lec­tion for FSB. FSB spoke with Wolfram Putz, one of the three found­ing part­ners of Graft, about the debate cur­rently dom­i­nat­ing Berlin’s ar­chi­tec­tural scene, col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jan Klei­hues and Mona Lisa’s smile.

You started your career with lots of pro­jects in the USA – but your focus seems to have shifted more towards Germany since then. Is that a fair ob­ser­va­tion? And if so, why?

You’re right, but the focus is already start­ing to shift again. Of course, with three offices we are able to follow market de­vel­op­ments rel­a­tively well. In America the entire con­struc­tion in­dus­try suf­fered greatly as a result of the fi­nan­cial crisis in 2009.

We had to shrink our op­er­a­tions in Los Angeles in a very natural way and focused our re­sources more on Germany, where the res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion market con­tin­ues to grow. All in all it was a very organic process. But like other ar­chi­tec­tural firms, we are cur­rently pushing our ac­qui­si­tion engine in America, because con­struc­tion has picked up again there as the economy has re­cov­ered.

Has the per­cep­tion of your ar­chi­tec­ture changed in this country in recent years?

We have more re­stric­tions in Germany than in the rest of the world. Here we still have to face over­sight from city build­ing com­mis­sions, which make de­ci­sions on design. And the debate in the ar­chi­tec­tural scene here is a little more con­ser­v­a­tive overall.

But because we want to keep build­ing our designs and don’t think much of life as unknown poets, we are forced to make all sorts of com­pro­mises, es­pe­cially in Berlin. Nat­u­rally this some­times brings moments of frus­tra­tion – in a city that is cur­rently re­con­struct­ing its palace.

How do you see the ar­chi­tec­tural debate in Berlin, then?
It’s rather closed – and it only works like that in Germany! The string of ar­gu­ments used in the Baukol­legium here would get you laughed off the stage in Los Angeles.

Speak­ing of debate on the Berlin ar­chi­tec­tural scene: how is your col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jan Klei­hues going in the Eckwerk project on the banks of the Spree?

It’s an arranged mar­riage that has grown to be a love match. Neither party wanted to work to­gether in the be­gin­ning, every­one was against it and tried to get the other party kicked off the project.

But an ex­ter­nal power – the client – forced us to work it out with each other. And after several months of co­op­er­a­tion a sym­bio­sis formed. We are learn­ing through a real project how to over­come the lim­i­ta­tions of mindset and thought processes. It feels good! Luckily, we also found that both sides not only have a cu­rios­ity in them, but also a good sense of humour, and every­one had an in­ter­est in the other. Sure, there are still moments where both parties shake their heads at the other’s mo­ti­va­tions. But mostly we just smile at each other and enjoy the shared ad­ven­ture that destiny brought us.

Has chang­ing your ge­o­graphic focus in­flu­enced your ar­chi­tec­ture?

That would be nice, but I don’t think so. We’re on planes much too often anyway, trav­el­ling around the world. And our staff are much too het­ero­ge­neous: of the 100 em­ploy­ees working in Berlin, maybe 15 have been here for a long time; the rest came to the city mostly for the fun things to do during their free time. (Putz laughs.)

In your view, what role does good ar­chi­tec­ture play in society?

A high-qual­ity, aes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ence plays an im­por­tant role in our co­or­di­nate system – and is part of a debate about sus­tain­abil­ity. That’s why we are so active in poorer coun­tries, because we find quality to be im­por­tant es­pe­cially in those places. We believe that good ar­chi­tec­ture – in terms of solving prob­lems – is hard to define. To us, good ar­chi­tec­ture means a lively, plu­ral­is­tic debate through con­struc­tion, not just speech, within a city. A city can ac­com­mo­date lots of at­ti­tudes and per­spec­tives and reflect them amongst each other, sig­nif­i­cantly more than what the debate in Berlin in recent years would suggest. We would really love, as an older, more es­tab­lished firm, to see younger ar­chi­tects and their works in the city.

What feeling does your ar­chi­tec­ture aim to give its users?

We don't have a creed, really, but we are in­ter­ested in dynamic and ex­pres­sive ar­chi­tec­ture. It aligns more with the per­cep­tions and per­spec­tives of the younger gen­er­a­tion. We are also big fans of the term ‘am­biva­lence’: we are really in­ter­ested in complex, con­tra­dic­tory, not wholly perfect states. What Michelan­gelo de­scribed as ‘non-finito’. What makes Mona Lisa’s smile so in­fi­nitely in­ter­est­ing? It’s the un­ex­plain­able!

How did you come to work with FSB?

We had been really active in res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion for several years, and somehow the idea came up to con­tinue the sto­ry­telling thread around the iden­tity of an apart­ment, so that it didn’t just end at the facade and floor plan, but went on through the fix­tures and fit­tings as well. We hired a couple of product de­sign­ers and created quite a few designs: sinks, taps, light switches and even door handles. In the be­gin­ning we still thought we could have the prod­ucts man­u­fac­tured our­selves – but that was a typical Graft idea, wanting to rein­vent the wheel. So we took our designs to the market leaders: FSB. FSB values ar­chi­tect au­thor­ship, so we knew that we were at the right place.

They looked at every­thing, in­cor­po­rated their ex­pe­ri­ence and every­thing that fol­lowed was very simple. Thanks to our pro­jects we also had plenty of volume that we were able to promise. That made things a bit easier. (Putz laughs.)

How makes your FSB 1246 door handle dif­fer­ent from other handles?

We didn’t want to make a Graft handle that ul­ti­mately no one wanted because it wasn’t func­tional. We were driven by Bauhaus think­ing to make some­thing con­tem­po­rary that could be a classic without clash­ing with other design ap­proaches.

In ad­di­tion to er­gonomic con­sid­er­a­tions, we took the me­thod­i­cal steps we use when de­sign­ing build­ings and trans­ferred them to the door handle. You look at the handle and you can see that it comes from geo­met­ri­cal er­gonom­ics: the handle forms edges on the curve and ridges on the sur­faces.

What type of build­ing is the door handle suit­able for?

That was the dif­fi­cult thing: re­duc­ing the handle design so that as many people as pos­si­ble would like it and it would work not just in a Graft build­ing, but also in a build­ing by Jan Klei­hues. We wanted to design a product that was de­mo­c­ra­tic through and through!