Hermann Kaufmann was born in 1955 in Reuthe, Bregenzerwald (Austria) and comes from a family with a long tradition in the carpentry business. At that time, it was a matter of course to help in the parental business, where he got to know directly the possibilities and the fascination of the building material wood, but also the way of technical thinking which essentially moulded his work as an architect. The decision to study architecture was also influenced by his uncle Leopold Kaufmann, outrider in wood constructions and protagonist of the architectural development in Vorarlberg, under whom he learned as an intern the hand tools of an architect.
He graduated from his studies at the Technical University in Innsbruck and the Technical University in Vienna, where he was essentially shaped by his teacher, Professor Ernst Hiesmayr. After two years of practice, in 1983, he founded his own architectural office consortium with Christian Lenz in Schwarzach.
His attitude as an architect is influenced by the ideas of classical modernism as well as by the debate on the context. A central theme of his work is the search for comprehensive answers to sustainability in building and the exploration of the possibilities of modern wood constructions. Numerous halls for carpentries and other businesses attest to his purposeful design concepts for wooden structures, which are architecturally elaborated and also effective for community halls. Besides numerous single-family houses, the project list is completed by cautious renewals of old building substances in sensitive village contexts, which proves his fine sense in handling existing architectural culture and landscape. Housing construction developed into a main task, especially in connection with wood and questions of energy, as well as school buildings and public buildings.
He started his teaching activity as a guest lecturer at the Liechtenstein School of Engineering and as a visiting professor at the Graz Technical University and the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Since 2002, he has been a professor of architecture, with a specialisation in timber and laminated wood constructions, at the Munich Technical University. In spring 2021, he retired from his professorship at the Technical University of Munich and continues to be active in the office.
In 2018, the office evolved into HK Architekten. The practice celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023 and has realised around 700 projects. Its work focuses on prefabricated timber construction, resource efficiency, the reuse of materials and the building life cycle as central design challenges. In recent years, the office has received several awards, including the Deutscher Holzbau Preis and the Deutscher Architekturpreis for the Schmuttertal-Gymnasium Diedorf (2017), and the Bayerischer Architekturpreis (2021).
