Das Architekturbüro J. MAYER H. Architects, 1996 in Berlin gegründet, arbeitet an den Schnittstellen von Architektur, Kommunikation und neuen Technologien. In kooperativen Teams wird, von Installationen bis zu städtebaulichen Entwürfen und internationalen Wettbewerben, multidisziplinäre Raumforschung erarbeitet und realisiert. Aktuelle Projekte sind das Stadthaus im
Scharnhauser Park in Ostfildern, HeatSeat – ein temperaturempfindliches Möbel, eine Mensa der Hochschule Karlsruhe und Metropol Parasol – die Neugestaltung der Plaza de la Encarnacion in Sevilla.
Scharnhauser Park in Ostfildern, HeatSeat – ein temperaturempfindliches Möbel, eine Mensa der Hochschule Karlsruhe und Metropol Parasol – die Neugestaltung der Plaza de la Encarnacion in Sevilla.
After graduating in Princeton and spending some time living in New York, JMH came to Berlin with the aim of confronting a critical architectural education with a quite charged and vivid cultural urban condition. Parallel to establishing a practice, he started teaching, and since then teaching has played a major role in testing the architectural consequences of cultural phenomena. Competitions and smaller art installation projects became the laboratories for making certain assumptions about the production and performance of the architecture.
The architects emerged on the international scene in 2003 after winning the Mies van der Rohe Award for Emerging European Architects for the town hall project, the stadt.haus Scharnhauser Park in Ostfildern, Germany. This combination of different public services generates synergetic effects provoking programmatic and visual transparency. Light and water animations are an integral part and include a subtle relationship between nature and technology. Framing the main entrance, visitors walk through computer animated artificial rain dripping from underneath the flat cantilever roof.
In 2005 the project of the office building ADA 1 („An der Alster 1“) in Hamburg was presented to the public and is expected to be finished in mid 2007. ADA 1 is a generic building structure with efficient floor plans. Pushing the opportunities for retreat or communication onto the layer of the façade, and thickening the „skin“ between the interior and exterior,was interesting in relation to a predefined generic office program. These elements give the building a different identity and yet reconnect the interior to the water landscape of Hamburg’s Aussenalster with „bulls-eye“ windows providing a panoramic view.
Part of the research JMH does is with companies at the forefront of material development. New programs, new requirements such as sustainability, atmospheric demands and even duration and lifetimes, ask for new construction methods and a more complex performance of materials.„For me it is interesting to see what happens if you use new materials and traditional ones to challenge conventional understanding of space“, architect Juergen Mayer H. explains.
Their temperature-sensitive furniture-like Heat.Seat shows very clearly that there is no longer an innocent surface. People leave traces wherever they are and this information has a certain value. And Pixy.Pieces, a collection of mosaic-covered furniture (Bisazza), come as a surprise. By sitting on this seemingly solid-tiled surface, one experiences a comfortably soft and elastic seating element. The glass mosaic tiles conceal a Polyurethane foam with an elastic skin offering a haptic sensation, amazes people with the combination of traditional and new materials.
Some years ago, on a central development site in the old quarter of Seville, archeologically valuable excavations were made while sinking a shaft for an underground car park. In 2004, the city of Seville initiated an urban development competition for this special location. In his winning competition entry, J. MAYER H. architects developed a proposal for an archaeological museum and also a new level containing a square dominated and protected from the sun by oversized „sunshades.“ The air-conditioned market hall is located on the ground floor level between the excavation site in the basement and the new level accommodating the square, which can be reached via long stairways. The draft and the supporting structure were further developed in collaboration with Arup in Berlin and Madrid. For this project JMH was awarded the Holcim Award Europe Bronze 2005 (the Holcim Award is for recognition of excellence in sustainability design in architecture). Metropol Parasol also was included in the 2006 MoMA exhibition „On Site“, a survey of contemporary architecture in Spain.
The Mensa Project in Karlsruhe (2004 – 2006) the architects used as a prototype. „We established a 3D diagram called the gum.gram or nutella.gram. Imagine two pieces of bread with a thick paste between them.We accepted the given site layout as the footprint of the building and only looked at the relationship between the floor and the roof. The structural elements became references to the diagrammatic process as well as to the blurry nature-urban transition that defines the site.Now, after working on the material aspects,we translated this elasticity into a timber structure coated with a specially developed polyurethane skin which has a strange rubbery quality.“ Its structural solution has become a prototype for public buildings because of its sustainability qualities, low maintenance and costs. Engaged with issues of new media and technologies, JMH outlined an architectural exploration dedicated to renewed investigations of technological materials such as the „new authentic," with its sensual, atmospheric approach to space.
© JAM Publications 2007
The architects emerged on the international scene in 2003 after winning the Mies van der Rohe Award for Emerging European Architects for the town hall project, the stadt.haus Scharnhauser Park in Ostfildern, Germany. This combination of different public services generates synergetic effects provoking programmatic and visual transparency. Light and water animations are an integral part and include a subtle relationship between nature and technology. Framing the main entrance, visitors walk through computer animated artificial rain dripping from underneath the flat cantilever roof.
In 2005 the project of the office building ADA 1 („An der Alster 1“) in Hamburg was presented to the public and is expected to be finished in mid 2007. ADA 1 is a generic building structure with efficient floor plans. Pushing the opportunities for retreat or communication onto the layer of the façade, and thickening the „skin“ between the interior and exterior,was interesting in relation to a predefined generic office program. These elements give the building a different identity and yet reconnect the interior to the water landscape of Hamburg’s Aussenalster with „bulls-eye“ windows providing a panoramic view.
Part of the research JMH does is with companies at the forefront of material development. New programs, new requirements such as sustainability, atmospheric demands and even duration and lifetimes, ask for new construction methods and a more complex performance of materials.„For me it is interesting to see what happens if you use new materials and traditional ones to challenge conventional understanding of space“, architect Juergen Mayer H. explains.
Their temperature-sensitive furniture-like Heat.Seat shows very clearly that there is no longer an innocent surface. People leave traces wherever they are and this information has a certain value. And Pixy.Pieces, a collection of mosaic-covered furniture (Bisazza), come as a surprise. By sitting on this seemingly solid-tiled surface, one experiences a comfortably soft and elastic seating element. The glass mosaic tiles conceal a Polyurethane foam with an elastic skin offering a haptic sensation, amazes people with the combination of traditional and new materials.
Some years ago, on a central development site in the old quarter of Seville, archeologically valuable excavations were made while sinking a shaft for an underground car park. In 2004, the city of Seville initiated an urban development competition for this special location. In his winning competition entry, J. MAYER H. architects developed a proposal for an archaeological museum and also a new level containing a square dominated and protected from the sun by oversized „sunshades.“ The air-conditioned market hall is located on the ground floor level between the excavation site in the basement and the new level accommodating the square, which can be reached via long stairways. The draft and the supporting structure were further developed in collaboration with Arup in Berlin and Madrid. For this project JMH was awarded the Holcim Award Europe Bronze 2005 (the Holcim Award is for recognition of excellence in sustainability design in architecture). Metropol Parasol also was included in the 2006 MoMA exhibition „On Site“, a survey of contemporary architecture in Spain.
The Mensa Project in Karlsruhe (2004 – 2006) the architects used as a prototype. „We established a 3D diagram called the gum.gram or nutella.gram. Imagine two pieces of bread with a thick paste between them.We accepted the given site layout as the footprint of the building and only looked at the relationship between the floor and the roof. The structural elements became references to the diagrammatic process as well as to the blurry nature-urban transition that defines the site.Now, after working on the material aspects,we translated this elasticity into a timber structure coated with a specially developed polyurethane skin which has a strange rubbery quality.“ Its structural solution has become a prototype for public buildings because of its sustainability qualities, low maintenance and costs. Engaged with issues of new media and technologies, JMH outlined an architectural exploration dedicated to renewed investigations of technological materials such as the „new authentic," with its sensual, atmospheric approach to space.
© JAM Publications 2007
