Founding partner of Baumschlager-Eberle Dietmar Eberle on the specific aspects of the practice’s approach: “Architecture in the sense of the art of building involves abstracting actual practical value on a cultural level. Transcending concrete requirements on a building creates the space for a cultural positioning of architecture and for individual visions.“
Baumschlager-Eberle starts out from the analysis of the respective urban-development dimension of a building, thus planning “from the exterior inwards“. The architects first decide on the materiality of the façade and the primary structure, which create the framework for any functional specification. The ultimate aim of this method is to create buildings which are neutral in utilization and which possess the potential for change and sustainability. New buildings should strive to generate identities for the space and not for the architect. Forms are to be taken seriously as metaphors, in order to engender the social and cultural acceptance that warrants the longevity of an edifice.
Visions arise from the analysis of factual conditions, whose boundaries are tested in a continuous process of invention. At the centre of this current exhibition lies, therefore, the project of the practice’s own office building in the Vorarlberg town of Lustenau. Examining the limits of architecture and technology, the title „Ohne alles“ [without everything] becomes symptomatic. The building itself will not require any type of external energy supply. Merely through air – as medium of warmth, cooling and ventilation – a sense of comfort is provided at radically reduced technical effort. The optimized structural system meets maximum demands at minimum weight. At the same time, the building is more than simply built manifestation of elaborate arithmetic. Rather, it conveys the excitement of materialization and a suspended physicality in the urban district.
The nuanced interaction of architecture and context is exemplified in the exhibition with a multitude of plans, photographs and models. The WHO building in Geneva, the airport extension in Vienna, the e-Science Lab of ETH Zurich and the Hilti Training Center and Office East in Liechtenstein are representative for some of the recently built structures. They all illustrate the degree of determination but also empathy characteristic for the architecture of Baumschlager-Eberle. Their gaze firmly fixed on the future, founding partners Dietmar Eberle and Carlo Baumschlager also engage in didactic challenges: Eberle teaches at ETH Zurich and Baumschlager works for the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, in particular on the refinement of a project-oriented design methodology.
