Crystal Talk
Text: Ulrike HaelePhotos: Lisa Rastl, Marcel Hagen, Hertha Hurnaus, Dietmar Tollerian

Interview

Caramel


The entire team is gathered at a large table around the corner from the entrance, the mood is good, and drinks are being served. It is one of the three bosses’ birthday. For some of them it is an informal morning get-together, for others a reviving breakfast after yet another night was sacrificed for a competition entry. The topic of competitions runs like a red thread through both the company’s history and the following discussion.

The washstand for FunderMax from 2001, the mobile structure in the form of an inflatable cloud for the 2004 Biennale; and the Lina house, a compact residential box for mother and child are some of my first memories of caramel. Just a few years down the road you have completed a series of major projects. Has Caramel grown up?


Ulrich Apetsberger:
No, I sincerely hope not! The trend over the last ten years was super, but we would put it down to chance. We still do everything that is in our spectrum. We have taken part in competitions and won them, and against all expectations they resulted in concrete contracts. But we still enjoy working on small assignments just as much.

Do you still have the time and capacity for them?

Günter Katherl:
Oh absolutely! The small assignments and design themes are the icing on the cake. We try to keep working in the office enjoyable. Spending five years working day and night on a major project is not always fun. Bigger companies often do one after the other, start off working on small projects and if larger ones follow do not do smaller ones any more. For us there is no forwards or backwards, no one contract is too small. In fact precisely the opposite is the case: The smaller they are, the more fun and sillier they are.



Ulrich Apetsberger:
At most there would be something we don’t really want to do …

What would that be?

Ulrich Apetsberger:
A competition that is poorly organized, that doesn’t comply with the rules.

Martin Haller:
I see that more in terms of content, a competition being lacking not just form-wise, but that also reflects the construction assignment poorly.

Günter Katherl:
We are trying to assume a pioneering role, for example in the fees architects charge. It shouldn’t be that in the ranking they are joint last with kindergarten teachers. To some extent we also serve as a role model when we say we are not taking part in a competition if those are the conditions.

Ulrich Apetsberger:
And in concrete terms right from the start. Even if it is unfortunately already common practice to draw up the preliminary draft free of charge, as a sort of preliminary service. We say on the contrary: the preliminary draft is the core, the foundations of the entire process, it has to be paid for.

In the past few years you completed four major projects, all the result of competitions you won. How much do you invest in competitions?


Martin Haller:
Competitions are our main topic! As for how much we invest, that can be anything from just one day to several weeks, depending on how quickly we come up with the basic idea. In an ideal situation the final outcome is just a sentence, a word, a sketch. This idea, depicted with very little elaboration, explains and carries the whole project. That stroke of luck, if it all works out, those are the really nice moments! The size of the competition is not important.

Günter Katherl:
We actually started out as just a pure competition studio. We don’t want to have to know people, we don’t want to be mustered anywhere …


Ulrich Apetsberger:
We don’t play golf and we don’t hunt …

Which competition are you working on right now?

Martin Haller:
We have just submitted an entry to a competition for a school. We started it yesterday lunchtime and it was ready today!

Ulrich Apetsberger:
That’s how we approached competitions earlier … De facto, competitions really wear you out and at times are self-exploitation.

Günter Katherl:
In reality they are about one, perhaps two statements, we can pen those well in a short space of time. We are never bothered about having nice rendering.


Martin Haller:
We are mainly invited to take part in competitions in Germany, and there good rendering is less a part of the architectural presentation and serves rather as a reference, to show that you are a company that can actually afford good rendering.

Ulrich Apetsberger:
What is important is that our employees also ought now ought to be able to do a competition entry. That is something that is no longer easy to fit in a time frame …

Günter Katherl:
Of course it also has to do with company policy, to do with employees having an opportunity to be involved with competitions, even if they have no experience. Team members’ personal development is the main thing, and that is part of it.




So are competitions a tool for motivating employees?

Ulrich Apetsberger:
Yes, exactly! If all somebody ever does is draw up plans for electrical systems at some point they are going to go mad.

Your projects are stand-alone buildings that are strong in character and for which for the most part the design of the façade plays an important role. How do you develop a project, what is the relationship between “skin and bones” in your structures?

Ulrich Apetsberger:
Earlier at least we only started thinking about the design of the façade at the very last moment, in the form of a few graphic lines. For us the façade is the final part of an assignment.


Martin Haller:
There are two different aspects, one is the form, and the other the façade. The form is the stand-alone, which we think about from the outset, whereas the sheath around this form is not the focal point.

Günter Katherl:
The shape, the inner life, is all developed from a concept. The façade is a detail. Ideally it is the façade that is the sheath, which emerges from the overall concept. All other aspects have an inner logic that emerges from the building site and the users’ needs, but then all of a sudden we have to include some windows! If we see no logic in it we say we can no longer do it!

Martin Haller:
With projects like the inflatable cloud you can see that as long as the sheath, like the form, is a homogeneous skin, a material, we are operating in an ideal condition. That also applies to houses and major projects. If there are too many requirements in terms of functions and materiality, things become difficult!



Your approach to the location is also indicative: In Linz the way the site is modeled means there is a link to the university campus, at the WIFI in Dornbirn a transparent edifice integrates the urban space as well. How important is communication with the urban environment, the surroundings?

Günter Katherl:
For us that is precisely what architecture is, at least that is how we see it!

Ulrich Apetsberger:
Linz is a good example of interlacing in urban planning. The place was so special that it was easy to respond to it. However, just churning out urban planning and producing an ideal model, that’s not for us. We need help with the design, reference points. The place itself is important, but the spatial program is and always will be the foundations.


Martin Haller:
What is important with the orientation tools is that one doesn’t get them mixed up. The protagonists of the international style refused references to the specific location in architecture. In the sense that it was geared too much to the cultural, local background, it was seen as negative from the outset. We are also looking for generally valid aspects we can keep to. Such as topography, atmospheric things, which can be just the same in Jena as they are in Vienna or Innsbruck …
Filtering out the general criteria for the surroundings, that is the challenge!




In Linz the master plan for the Science Park was your work, and the third of four buildings is just being built. What was the special challenge?

Günter Katherl:
Hemmed in between the slope above and buildings that pointed in a specific direction and dated from the between the Wars beneath the campus, it was clear which direction we had to build in. What were also decisive were the fall winds from the north, which are important for the urban climate. We opted for this more airy, playful footprint. Looking at the urban planning model, the missing head, which will probably never be built, was a major challenge. How can you plan a building without a head? You begin with the shoulders! That is how this game with bends and parts jutting out began, first across the footprint, then via the layout as far as the façade …


There was a very nice piece of work here that emerged from your collaboration with the landscape architecture firm Idealice, which congenially translated your path concept into a graphic structure. What form does this sort of cooperation take?

Günter Katherl:
The transition from rigid buildings dating from between the Wars to the open surroundings, to nature corresponded precisely with this game with lines. It begins in the footprint and just doesn’t stop, the lights are just positioned any old way, and even the furniture continues the theme. Lots of people will say it is too playful but it was our very first concept. It doesn’t matter if we are inflating a balloon or building a major structure, the basic idea is the basis! There are strong reasons for it, it is logical and is implemented so consistently that ultimately you find it all over.

Ulrich Apetsberger:
The collaboration with Idealice is an excellent example: we have 20 people sitting here in the office, but working with external partners is very important to us. It is not imposed landscape planning, but part of the overall concept we drew up together. Reference is also frequently made to the structural engineering early on. A new generation of structural engineers like those at Werkraumwien has played a role in something highly attractive emerging between the two specialist fields.

Günter Katherl:
The architect as a universal artist is a thing of the past. With any project we start talking to people from other disciplines early on. It is only possible to create something together, as a group.



You are in the process of constructing what has to be the most typical Viennese building assignment, publicly funded residential accommodation. What is the missing contribution, in terms of type or concept, you can make with this small but fine project?

Martin Haller:
From our point of view we succeeded in making residential accommodation something conceptual. There are 17 apartments, but actually they are 17 intricate multistorey single-family dwellings. No two are alike, they all have a garden and loggia or loggia and roof terrace. And the intricacy is also expressed in the façade, even from 100 meters away everyone can say where they live.

What is working together as a team like?

Günter Katherl:
We are three extremely different characters. That, and the development of an argumentative atmosphere, have always been our strengths. As much as harmony in the company is important, arguing among us three is all the more important. Martin once said that “if we ever stop arguing we’ll never win anything again.”

Martin Haller:
… then there will be no more Caramel! We argue with each other about content, in what is ultimately a productive, positive way.




Where do you see yourselves in ten years?


Ulrich Apetsberger:
We intend to be working, winning and building, but we have no life plan. Ten years ago we didn’t say that we wanted to have a 540-square meter office and 20employees a decade later.

Günter Katherl:
We want to be just as satisfied as we are now. We created the structure, and the life we lead we lead in the company on a small scale, and we can continue it on this scale as well.

Martin Haller:
The most important thing is that we have projects that are fun, regardless of what size they are! Winning three unexciting major contracts would be a horror scenario. Working on a few exciting projects with fewer employees is not.

Ulrich Apetsberger:
One topic that is very important to us is the future: ecological thinking. And it is not so important that we only use super-ecological materials. We pursue a more holistic way of thinking. When dealing with resources, be it on the plot of land, with regard to construction, in the appearance.


Martin Haller:
If anything, preferably a return to low-tech rather than exaggerated building services engineering for passive and low-energy houses. After all if you look at the CO2 footprint of all these high-tech solutions that have been used a lot turns out to be just a lie.

Ulrich Apetsberger:
The discussion must lead in a different direction. Away from isolated buzz words such as “kwh/m2” towards overall contexts, that is where we would like to play a role!

Thank you very much!





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Interview: Ulrike Haele
Ulrike Haele lives and works in Vienna. Studied Product Design at the University of Applied Art in Vienna, and Journalism and Communications Science at the University of Vienna. Research assistant at the Institute of Design Research Vienna (IDRV). Works as a freelance author, among other things as a contributing editor for A10.

project management: Andrea Nakath