The Detail and the Collaboration

This article is from the archive of Roca Gallery. It was first published in October, 2024.

The Study Pavilion on the campus of the Technical University of Braunschweig has received multiple awards since it was completed in 2023, including the German Architecture Award and the DAM Award, and most recently, the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture-Mies van der Rohe Award 2024. In this interview, architects Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke talk with Peter Cachola Schmal about how the project came about, and its design and construction.

PCS (Peter Cachola Schmal): Let's start with the construction.

GD (Gustav Düsing): When I was studying in Stuttgart in 2004, my structural engineering professor was Jan Knippers from Knippers Helbig. Their practice was located above me in the place where I lived. After graduating, I worked at Barkow Leibinger, and Florian Scheible from Knippers Helbig Berlin joined as a structural consultant. He did an incredible job with sketches that he drew to scale by hand, which he folded and traced again and again until they became a three-dimensional structure. After we talked about the Braunschweig competition, he did one, measured it, photographed it with his mobile phone, and sent it to me in Stuttgart. An hour later we had a fully-fledged technical drawing on the table, and then I asked him to take part in the competition.

PCS: Let's talk about the most important detail: the node. In my opinion, it's very different from the details of the early high-tech buildings by Foster, Rogers, and Grimshaw, which have a similar appearance but were more differentiated. What does it mean to have developed this node? Was it fifty-fifty with the engineer?

MH (Max Hacke): Yes, it was a design achievement on our part and a technical and structural achievement on the part of the engineering firm. We complemented each other very well. We were absolute beginners and were as enthusiastic about technical architecture as the British were. We were equally inspired by Japanese architects like Junya Ishigami, whose structures are incredibly elegant. In fact, his Kanagawa Institute of Technology (KAIT) was our role model, a project that we’ve been citing all the time.

There's a lot of tinkering and a lot of intelligence in the detail, but it's really a very simple detail. It's a bolt with a nut that connects a beam to the support in a very small space with high precision and is covered with a small cover plate so that, in the end, you only have a clean beam connection to a support.

One of the great achievements is the precision. You can balance the entire building via the node and compensate for every tolerance so that the facade can also be applied directly to the supporting structure. We are talking about tolerances in the zero-point mm range. This was possible because we had Cornils GmbH as our steel construction company, who also built the facade, so there was no difference in the execution.

GD: The idea of the detail was to create equivalence and to reduce it so that it’s perceived as a bar support structure. Rather than the focus being on the connection or the screws and lugs, the frame reads as it is in its entirety. The idea of this matrix then comes through, everything disappears, and the construction becomes a bit effortless.

The TU Braunschweig is already discussing whether and where a second Study Pavilion should be built—ours could easily be extended in a modular way.

PCS: Did you two work together in Berlin?

MH: Not yet. At that time I was still working in London as a salaried architect and spent my entire vacation on this competition. When we also won the second phase, we began working together in Berlin.

GD: Our office was called Gustav Düsing & Max Hacke GbR. I basically already had an office, more in the art sector. We are two individuals with two different areas of interest. It was the same at the AA in London, where we got to know each other. We were part of two different programs. I was with Eugene Han working on large-scale, structural architecture with parametric leanings. Later, I spent three years at Barkow Leibinger and was on the design team of the Fellows Pavilion for the American Academy in Berlin.

MH: And I was at the AA with Shin Egashira, which was focused on architecture as collage in the sense of Colin Rowe's Collage City, experimenting a lot with materials. After that, I joined Wilkinson Eyre, where I worked on the conversion of three gasometers into housing.

GD: Then I started my own business. To finance myself, I took a job at the TU Braunschweig, although I wasn’t working with Volker Staab yet, who had initiated the Study Pavilion project. It was only after winning the competition that I worked for him for three years and was able to support the realization of the project.

PCS: And then came all the architecture prizes, I don't know how many, crowned by the EU Mies Award. What happens when you're young and you get prizes like that?

GD: When you teach, you suddenly have a different standing, you get different positions and when you apply for projects and show these references, it opens a lot of doors, because people see this list of prizes and know that this is good architecture. So it gives you access to a different level of procedures and projects. On the other hand, you also must meet these expectations. It's also the case that people listen to you now. You're encouraged to create more radical designs because you know that people think to themselves that we'll manage somehow.

MH: Yes, I see it similarly. It's also the case that Gustav and I must keep pinching each other. Is it really true that we've won all these prizes in a row? By the way, tomorrow we're going to Lindau to receive the German Steel Construction Award. I still can't believe it.

GD: We were approached when we had our first article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper. We were working on a project in Cologne for a very architecturally minded client who has a huge industrial company. However, that has just been put on hold. Requests tend to come from award committees, lectures, and academia. I have the feeling that this project is very academic, and especially for private clients, perhaps it’s a bit too extreme.

Also, I think we have to understand that this is a time when the ideas about office and portfolio are different. We are part of a network and have always had to join forces to be efficient. For some projects, this kind of constellation works, and for others, a different constellation works better. And that's how it will continue.

Main image: Study Pavilion, TU Braunschweig, Germany, 2023, Gustav Düsing, Max Hacke. Photo © Leonhard Clemens

DAM Prize 2024, Study Pavilion of the TU Braunschweig, Germany, Gustav Düsing, Max Hacke. Film production: Studio Johannes Förster