Brutalist revival. J. Mayer H. completes Casa.Morgana
08/08/2019.
[Nothern Germany] Germany
metalocus, ÁNGEL VALDEZ
metalocus, ÁNGEL VALDEZ
Project description by J. Mayer H.
Casa Morgana is somewhere else. Surrounded by neighbouring homes dating from the late nineteenth century, the building is like a study for possible future architecture and seems to have fallen out of context. Surrounding nature simulates a subtropical oasis and locates the residential sculpture between optical disturbance and atmospheric displacement.
The three-story building consists formally of several differently sized cubes placed at staggered levels on top of one another, connected by a central stairway. The existing building from 1972 and its annexes from 1991 were reduced to their shells and then retaken with targeted interventions: not as a cosmetic make-over, but as a location that distils and continues the archaic and brutalist aesthetic from the time of the building’s original emergence.
The cubature of the building was focused upon with architectural additions of exposed concrete and the partial removal of ceilings and walls. Staggered floors and different room heights create vertical links and manifold sequences of rooms. The cubic house creates a large residential landscape in its reduced, furnished interior. Separating elements between the individual areas are formed as poché rooms and take up different functions. The mirrored walls reflect the exposed concrete, the terrazzo installations appear like cuts through the concrete walls and expose the inner structure of the material. The roughly improved already existing concrete walls also create a hybrid of reduction and projection.
Towards the street and the side plots, the building seems closed and avoids neighbourly proximity. It is only towards the garden that it turns its monochromatic interior toward the lush greenery. The large glass pivoting doors open the entire living area into an oasis of bamboo, tree trunks, palms and mushrooms designed by the artist Tita Giese.
Jürgen Mayer H. Founded in 1996 in Berlin, Germany, J. MAYER H Architects’ studio, focuses on works at the intersection of architecture, communication and new technology. From urban planning schemes and buildings to installation work and objects with new materials, the relationship between the human body, technology and nature form the background for a new production of space.
Jürgen Mayer H. is the founder and principal of this crossdisciplinairy studio. He studied at Stuttgart University, The Cooper Union and Princeton Universtiy. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide and is part of numerous collections including MoMA New York and SF MoMA. National and international awards include the Mies-van-der-Rohe-Award-Emerging-Architect-Special-Mention-2003 ,Winner Holcim Award Bronze 2005 and Winner Audi Urban Future Award 2010. Jürgen Mayer H. has taught at Princeton University, University of the Arts Berlin, Harvard University, Kunsthochschule Berlin, the Architectural Association in London, the Columbia University, New York and at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Photograph.- Jens Passoth