Crystal Talk
Text: Cordula VielhauerPhotos: Torsten Seidel

Interview

Interview hsh

HOYER SCHINDELE HIRSCHMÜLLER ARCHITEKTUR
As far as architects go, they are makers and shakers: Hoyer Schindele Hirschmüller is a studio that has been designing buildings from the word go. And yet they also see themselves as researchers: Because for HSH each project is a “case study”, in which something that is established is given new contours. We asked them about it and received answers based on practical experience in the studio: How they land contracts and get hold of developers, how they define their task as architects, which networks they use and not least of all the question: Where does the best energy flow?

The new building in Auguststrasse in Berlin represented your first “architectural calling card. With its sculptural facade made of wood and plaster, it certainly caused a sensation. At the time the Berlin design bylaws were extremely strict, there was a dispute raging about the façade on Pariser Platz, and people were asking: is that actually legal?


Harald Schindele
The project was based on market research. At the time there were few new buildings in Scheunenviertel. We wanted to find out just what type of apartment was missing. We noticed that for example the only maisonette apartments were those that included the attic. Our building in Auguststrasse functions in a similar way to the Gameboy game Tetris, which at the time had an influence on us. The maisonette apartments with their L-shapes and double Hs are stacked in a similar way to in Tetris. The façade once again reflects inner life, but also responds to the old building context: We stucco-related privileges, laws, which, though they stem from 1780, were still valid in the late 1990s. These allowed us to model the façade in such a sculptural way, use both the inside and the outside – variations so to speak of classic oriel and loggia themes.


How does one of your projects evolve? For his residential project in Berlin the architect Wolfram Popp first of all looked for buyers and then an investor. What is your approach?

Florian Hoyer
In principle thee are two scenarios: On the one hand you have an investor who wants to build something. Then at an early stage a group of purchasers comes along that is prepared to be involved with the project. And that’s where the conflict arises: Even before there are any purchasers, the investor or builder decides on quality, in order to “entice” clients. Once all the purchasers have been got together all he sees is the maximization of his profit. Naturally enough his profit margin is to be found somewhere in the Delta between what he receives and what he has to spend. And then he tries to keep the latter as low as possible, which marks the beginning of our work to convince him to let us take of the quality.

Harald Schindele
As architects we are in a much stronger position with regard to the builder or investor if the future occupants get involved themselves. In such a situation he is unable to regiment us so much. After all our purchasers want quality – which is something we welcome.

Fortunately we now have our own client base: People come to us whether we have any projects on the go at the moment. We then include them in a list. When there are between five and ten of them we approach the builder or investor and ask whether he would be interested in building something with us. That’s the second scenario.




So you act as project developers. Does that mean you also look for the plot of land?

Markus Hirschmüller
Exactly, that’s a major point. Our clients are fixated on a very specific area of Berlin, namely the Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg districts. Though we now have projects in other areas of the city, (for one or two years now we have gradually been moving westward) our work, with the case study houses as well, is at home in this highly concentrated city. Plots of land measuring 600 to 1,500 square meters, with which we have been working to date, are a good model: The buildings are appropriately sized to be able to communicate quality directly. As of a certain size selling all the apartments in advance no longer works. That is when you end up including in the building process compromise units that are scarcely defined, and that is always a shame.


In Berlin there is no way round having to deal with old buildings. Do you consider that to be more of a restriction or inspiration?

Florian Hoyer
For us it involves a tremendous attraction. As an architect you have a split attitude to the fact that most people want to live in an old building. As far as we are concerned the challenger is to combine old and new buildings.

In that sense your case study house in Choriner Strasse was particularly successful…

Harald Schindele
We see it more as “urban commentary”...

Just how did you arrive at the term case study houses, gaps and roofs? What role does Californian Modernism play for you? Are they role models for you?


Harald Schindele
Actually they are they are three different themes, all of which are to do with living. As far as Californian architecture is concerned Richard Neutra, who redefined the transition from interior to exterior, is extremely important to me. For us too the topic of “outside –inside” plays an enormous role, particularly in the case of loft extensions, which frequently represent a completely new, totally free level in the urban landscape. This is where we begin using patios, in other words outside areas that are cut into the interior. Paths are positioned around them so that in summer there is a larger living area available.

Florian Hoyer
We use the term case study literally. We really do go to the site and ask: What is possible here? This results not so much in repetition as variation.


Markus Hirschmüller
Whereby it’s the typological aspect that is the deciding point. The gap, the building that is 16 to 20 meters wide, the maisonette, the view to the courtyard, to the garden, to the road – assuming you have these elements and a roof, ideally with a panoramic view – then you have all the ingredients for a typology you can experiment with. So in each project certain parameters are defined that make up a “field of experimentation” and other factors accepted as being pre-defined.

Are there any other spatial types you vary – after all “maisonette apartment” is extremely general?

Markus Hirschmüller
We propose spatial catenations that at first sight seem to be unusual: One such example would be the option of the bathroom opening onto the bedroom, which is a plus point for both rooms: The bedroom becomes bigger, and from the bath in it there is a view of the greenery in the interior courtyard. In this way a relationship emerges between sleeping, bathing, and body culture.

A sort of private spa zone?


Markus Hirschmüller
Exactly. Another is the high spaces we try to configure beside the facade. If you have spaces that are six meters high, like in Auguststrasse, you can work with lower heights in other areas. This creates spatial excitement. So what we are trying to do is play with that, give some spaces more potential and others less. This is also a theme of classic Modernism. We see the severe restrictions as a result of building laws, economic restraints and the limitations a gap like this sets, as a challenge to develop that bit “more” from the space available. By means of horizontal and vertical displacement.

Harald Schindele
It’s all about improving the quality of life. It’s our aim to be able to say, in a city: I open the door and I’m in an apartment that is paradise. I can relax, can recharge my batteries. Even if I have two or three children. And if I only want children later, the apartment has to be able to cope with them as well. It has to be extendable, be in a position to be completely turned upside down. There is interdependency between future occupants and our spatial ideas. To put it the other way round: If somebody wants us to do a conventional footprint for them, in other words with a central hall and two rooms to the right and left, we turn it down.




Which project gave you your breakthrough or at least made you realize you wanted to carry on in this way?

Florian Hoyer
All of them.

Harald Schindele
We’re not a studio that goes in for competitions. With competitions I can well imagine that you win a major one and that’s the starting point, from when on everything changes. On some occasions we did look on enviously, but it’s just not our way of working, and we can’t get in on them anyway. To be perfectly honest it would mean us having to invest a lot of effort in a competition department and we think that is too much trouble.


Florian Hoyer
We’re in the fortunate position of having enough to do. And to say during the construction process “right, let’s go in for a competition – but you can’t go in for just one – so let’s go in for ten, is just not on as far as we’re concerned. Over the past ten years we went in for perhaps five competitions, i.e., a half every year.

Harald Schindele
We do think that it provides a good opportunity for studying. But you also need time to develop and learn the “language”.

And in Berlin there are no longer any competitions for residential buildings. These days, competitions, which are anyway restricted, are for totally different types of building: Museums, schools, administration buildings...

Markus Hirschmüller
We always restrict ourselves to apartments. The E-Werk, for example, was a project that opened up new a totally different horizon for us. But what it has in common with all our other projects was our intense dealings with the city and the close attention we paid to the listed building. Whether we’re talking about a monument or the building fabric or the size of the buildings on either side of a gap, or indeed an old building itself plays no role whatever for us. In Sophienstrasse we are currently working on a listed building. On Teutoburger Platz we did a roof extension in a listed ensemble of buildings. In the E-Werk we paid very close attention to old building fabric.

Harald Schindele
What we also do – unconsciously and consciously - is “detective work”. We look for elements we can take, can use, which recharge us and which we in turn recharge by discovering them. In that respect the E-Werk was a brilliant playground.





There are almost mystical stories going round about the E-Werk construction process ...

Florian Hoyer
... which we really don’t want to go into in any depth here, …or do we??

(At this point the tape recorder is switched off and Florian Hoyer tells the legend of a small St. Christopher sculpture that wondrously survived the construction process in a Rachel Whiteread-like restroom under a staircase in the E-Werk, and today graces the front wall of the studio. The architects only give more precise information if personally asked to do so.)

Harald Schindele
Markus will also be giving a lecture on energy at the beginning of December. All about energies: How can we use them? We even once had a building that was blessed.

Florian Hoyer
Now that really was something, yes indeed. The one in Choriner Strasse. To begin with just about everything that could possibly go wrong did so. Although he was German, the developer had spent several years living in Russia. And he had good connections with the Russian-orthodox church. And at some point he got so fed up with the building site that he got hold of a Russian-orthodox priest and had the entire house blessed. The following day the construction firm announced it was bankrupt, was out of the contract, the whole thing ground to a halt – and from then everything went like clockwork.

Markus Hirschmüller
Just imagine it: Someone actually turned up with a thurible and blessed all the walls...


Harald Schindele
There was a similar incident in Auguststrasse, though on a different level. We opened up the plot of land because it was nine months until we could start building work. We set up a local café, invited artists to the dilapidated outbuilding in the rear courtyard; the kids spent nine months there developing their sprayer skills. And when the building was ready it was spared of graffiti for three years – for Berlin an eternity. I think they realized you can adopt a different approach to building sites, and they respected that. The developers too. The fact that you don’t just put up a fence, but communicate. And we refer to that as charging or energy flows.

Markus Hirschmüller
Perhaps it sounds a touch esoteric. But the fact that we are here in Berlin has got something to do with it. We told ourselves we were going to be part of the mood after the Wall came down and the sense of new departure.

Harald Schindele
Berlin continues to be dominated by a generation that is ten years older than we are. So we were faced with the question of unique characteristics. Auguststrasse was the initial booster for that.

Building apartments for people that want to live in a city but are looking for qualities associated with houses?

Harald Schindele
We are slowly beginning to get away from this niche form of architecture. It’s now going to be important for us to handle bigger projects.

Markus Hirschmüller
We are also beginning to venture out of Berlin. To begin with we are “moving” from East to West Berlin, which is important...




Harald Schindele
We are working on projects in Irsee, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, as well as in London and Riga .This involves commercial buildings as well, for example alterations to a supermarket.

Florian Hoyer
In Riga, we are building 1,000 square meters of residential accommodation, and for us that is a quantum leap forward.

Markus Hirschmüller
What is interesting is that outside Germany as well there is a lot of interest in Berlin. In other words we are not only involved in international projects, our Berlin clients are also often foreigners. 60 % of my dealings with developers are now conducted in English, and in Florian’s case in Spanish.


Harald Schindele
And in mine the Hessian dialect.

Florian Hoyer
But not yet in Russian. Over the past nine months we have certainly noticed that things are moving again in Berlin, that we are gaining ground again, that money is coming into the city. But as I said, there are only foreign investors, who are building for their own purposes, as well as for other occupants.

How important are computers in your work? Do you use them as design tools or just for implementation? Do you build models at all?

Markus Hirschmüller
At college we were almost the last intake to still work on an analog basis. When I moved to Los Angeles things were already totally different there. Even then computers were already an important topic. In L.A. there was almost a sort of MTV-architecture. Enormous numbers of images with a high degree of perfection were produced extremely quickly. The questioning before you make a stroke (which you then laboriously have to rub out again) is missing. For me, being able to do both is a quality.





Harald Schindele
I can’t design something using a computer alone. I always have to print everything out, reconstruct it, and exploit it to the full. I’m far too easily seduced by beautiful images, I still don’t totally believe in them. Computers are just one element for use in portraying something. But precisely for simulating things like the course of the sun they’re unbeatable.

Markus Hirschmüller
We still build models, in fact more and more. We have also started looking at more minor situations in model form again. It goes without saying that we also have the facility to create visualizations in the office. We have always done everything: 3D on the computer and as a model. And we use computers as a machine for images and as a network device.

What do you think of the classic networks for architects? After all you’re in the Association of German Architects (BDA)...

Harald Schindele
The BDA is good on the one hand: They send a super Info Letter, you find out what’s going on in the city. You receive invitations to new buildings and offices, etc.. On the other, not enough attention is paid to the patronage of young studios. In other words to the fact that now and again someone should stand up for the young studios and against the phalanx that covers everything like a film of oil. In this respect there is nothing being done, which is a great shame. Perhaps you have to do it yourself.


Harald Schindele
Things do still happen at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. It might be on a totally different level, but there was a debate about Schlossplatz that went on for two years.

At BauNetz we frequently hear about the drives that the various associations organize. For example what about the “architecture export” initiative, which is concerned with German architecture abroad, in China, Russia, and Dubai?

Harald Schindele
If anything the “Partner for Berlin” and “Creative Industries” initiatives were of importance. Over a period of 18 months they proved to be a fantastic organization for us. They took us with them, invited us along, we got around, went to London and Los Angeles. There were interesting events, people communicated. Wowereit, the Lord Mayor of Berlin, pushed it at the time, saying creativity was possible in Berlin. It worked very well. Unfortunately the funding has now been axed, which is a tremendous shame. But it strengthened our international footing. Because having been involved in a project abroad and being a complete unknown are totally different things.

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