Crystal Talk
Text: Axel SimonPhotos: M. Frietsch, R. Waldi, H. Helfenstein

Interview

Interview Knapkiewicz + Fickert

"WE ARE TOTALLY LACKING IN ATTITUDE."
KASCHKA KNAPKIEWICZ AND AXEL FICKERT ON DESIGN, KITSCH AND COMPUTERS


You have become a cult.

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
What’s that?

The housing types you conceived 20 years ago still crop up in designs by architec¬ts young enough to be your kids.

Axel Fickert
You mean the competition entry for the Selnau residential development in Zurich, which we created in 1985 for the Steiger & Partner office. It only came fifth. Our proposal was for apartments taking up one-and-a-half storeys, which was considered a waste at the time. People see it differently today. Such rooms are now seen as value added.

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
It really is crazy. You get all that stuff today. Including the loft apartments like those we are just now realizing from the six-year-old design for the “Locomotive“ in Winterthur crops up in competitions today.


You are considered to be experts for residential buildings but you have also realized projects in which the focus was on the construction. Are these both tasks that really call for your atmospheric approach?

Axel Fickert
The design of the platform roofing owes a lot to mood, the bus terminal also. And that’s something highly respected engineers find fault with.

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
They say it is fudged.

Axel Fickert
Not without reason. We weren’t out to win any medals for the engineering.

You once said that the bus terminal was not “intelligent construction” and in doing so lashed out at the very engineers who try to conceive of space and construction as one. What is wrong with that?

Axel Fickert
There is nothing at all wrong with that. But the thing is there is now this idea in Switzerland that it is an obligation or sorts to develop the concept solely from constructional topics. But that can’t be the solution surely. There are so many things you can draw inspiration from.


Kaschka Knapkiewicz
If we are able to choose whether we solve a problem in an atmospheric manner or via the construction, we would probably opt for the atmospheric and make compromises in the precision of the construction.

That produces contradictions.

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
Contradictions have a magical attraction for me! They open up new perspectives and often cancel taboos of your own making.

Contradictions can also be seen in your very wide spectrum of architectural expression. From retro to Dekon??

Axel Fickert
That has to do with the existing situation. In the case of the “Locomotive“ in Winterthur this factory complex from the turn of the century is very dominant. That put us on the retro track. We have a sporting attitude to it: The sheer adversity of not being able to make a steel trelliswork like in the old buildings here, that was the kick, finding something new, this grid structure in plaster...

...that looks like a concrete frame.

Axel Fickert
You cannot structure the building on account of the insulating skin. It is like a pullover, and you can only vary it very slightly. Our grid gives you the impression of being solid, made of different materials. Ok, so it is an illusion. But then again outside insulation IS about illusion.

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
We are not looking for the most advanced plasterwork in technical terms, but are creating something baroque. And God knows, we are not the first to do so. Palladio also scratched the division of stone cladding in the plasterwork, in order to build more cheaply...

Axel Fickert
We allow ourselves the liberty of being emotional. Relate to what is already there, for instance the houses from the post-war reconstruction period. And then someone can say it looks like barracks from the American occupied zone, as a colleague recently remarked.

You not only relate to something but produce a 1:1 replica of it. Which is perhaps what some people reproach you for: It is an image, which does not clearly reveal that it is an image.

Axel Fickert
It is not an image at all, but a direct adoption. We model our work on a plaster method, which we apply to a new constructional basis – namely the compact façade, something you can hardly get around. We simply appreciate it being recognizable, something that not only experts but also quite normal people can appreciate.


You are aiming for the popular.

Axel Fickert
Yes, you could say that.

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
We try to express something in a manner that makes it comprehensible. Like in our speech in architecture we also avoid foreign words and all the cult associated with them.

What do you see as kitsch?

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
Nothing bad. Often something attractive, something that is out of the ordinary in a remarkable way and as such triggers fantasies and memories.


Axel Fickert
Kitsch is not really a problem. That is less and less so. Speaking for ourselves we have fewer and fewer professional taboos. Or it is increasingly attractive to work with extremes. To break certain rules.

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
It is a fine line you tread. Is something kitsch or naive? If someone puts together a railing, it might look much more attractive than one an architect designs.

Axel Fickert
The elitist architects’ aesthetic has reached a dead end because it limits itself to shiny iron and chromium steel. And elegant details. In the end there is no idea visible, all you see is the elegant execution. And times are changing. I would claim that the fact young offices such as EM2N are working with one-and-a-half storey rooms also has to do with the lack of enthusiasm for details. In such rooms perception shifts away from details and towards totally different things. Spatial opulence, for instance. You no longer notice the awful general contractor handling of the project. That will be our domain in future: shifting attention.

I recall when Munich-based Andreas Hild took to the lectern as guest critic during Axel’s time as stand-in-professor at the ETH Zurich six years ago. He described one of our favorite designs for a pair of semis as the lining up of individual episodes. It is criticism that could also be applied to your projects.

Axel Fickert
It may be that we don’t manage it, but naturally it is our aim to create a single unit from these episodes. But that need not be the same material or the same balcony but perhaps a similar kind of finishing. Previously we were horrified at Miroslav Sik’s idea that designs should also find favor with our grandmothers. I can understand that today.


What brought about this change?

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
We are getting older. (laughs)

What does "contemporary" mean for you?

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
There is something in the air, it crops up simultaneously at various places…

Axel Fickert
Then we have the feeling we are in on the act, are young: If others who are a good 15 years younger address similar themes.

You feel more at home in the young generation than in your own?

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
Very much so. Young students are once again doing what they really want to do.

For your bus terminal you flirt with the world of deconstructivism.

Axel Fickert
No, not at all. We started quite naively, and suddenly it gained this dynamism of its own. More oblique! It just took off when we working on the model. And then we took it one step further.


I am more used to encountering your stylistic flexibility in 20-year old students, who think nothing at all about drawing steep roofs alongside blobs. Expressed negatively you could say they and you both lack a fundamental approach.

Axel Fickert
Absolutely correct. We lack any kind of approach. Or our approach is not to have one and to approach it anew. Both emotionally but also in terms of design.

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
If things get too boring, you have to create tension. Our aim: exciting rooms that create suspense.

Axel Fickert
We use recollections and we have a certain tendency to romanticize. And to caricature.

Does caricature not also mean a detached, exposing look?

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
No an affectionate one! With a twinkle in your eye as in Jacques Tati’s work. Not as a provocation.


There is one more question I have to ask since a computer firm is footing the bill for our interview: What role does the computer play in your work?

Axel Fickert
Meanwhile it plays a central role. We work visually – with renderings, above all in order to elaborate our ideas.

Kaschka Knapkiewicz
We love our Mac!

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