The architectural office blauraum in Hamburg is known in Germany among other things for projects in Hamburg which have received numerous awards, including international ones: the apartment building “Wohnen [+]” on Bogenallee, the “Freitag Flagshipstore,” and “treehouses” on Bebelallee.
The exhibition WIRKLICHWAHR deals with the discrepancy between the presence of a depiction and physical reality - a much favored theme in the fine arts at the latest with Magritte’s “La trahison des images” (The Treason of Images). Contemporary CAD and image-processing technologies make it possible to present both realized and conceptualized architecture as apparently quite real, so to speak. For the beholder, no question remains open. But what remains of a work of architecture when material, function, and scale (or even one of these parameters) is not unambiguously legible? Shifted into the background now is the question of whether the image represents a realized building, or “only” a conceptual plan. At what point does architecture become reality? With the first stroke of the pen, or instead with the laying of the foundation stone?
The installation of this exhibition plays with such habits of vision, and with the perceptions of the beholder. Large-format visualizations display projects by blauraum while posing the question: “Real or unreal?” Additional digital presentation formats (computer screens) feature detailed explications of the office’s projects and display a cross-section of their production to date.
The architectural office blauraum was founded in Hamburg in 2002. The managing directors are Volker Halbach, Rüdiger Ebel, and Carsten Venus. Their projects are characterized by a delight in experimentation, interdisciplinary design practices, and an avant-garde formal idiom. Emerging on the basis of an analytical evaluation of a given building task and its urbanistic framing conditions as well as the relevant economic and energy factors is a custom-made architecture that is emotionally effective and the same time provides a sense of identity. Via the processing of various levels of significance, buildings are developed which offer multiple interpretive possibilities and which arrive at their particular truths only through the viewer's perspective. Moreover, blauraum is intensely preoccupied with the theme of “reconstruction”: a special focus within the urbanistic activities of this architectural office is the revitalization of existing urban structures and buildings, as well as their sustainable further development for the sake of flexible utilizations.
Catalogue
An Aedes catalogue was published.
With a text by Prof. Dr. Gert Kähler
ISBN 978-3-937093-20-8
German/English
Price € 10,-
Sponsors
Assmann Beraten + Planen, GROHE, ophelis, M&P Gruppe, OBJECT CARPET, COMSPOT, Zumtobel, Busch-Jaeger, carpetconcept, AXOR Hansgrohe
