“My personal little theory is that we’re all constantly reworking our childhoods. For me, creativity has a lot to do with recovering lost innocence.”
In conversation with the Founder of Design Studio J Mayer Jürgen Mayer H
‘The updated Architect’, who majorly works towards the intersection of Architecture, Communication and New technology. Having studied at Stuttgart University, The Cooper Union and Princeton University, Jürgen Mayer H. founded his studio J MAYER H in Berlin in 1996. Awards include Mies-van-der-Rohe-Award-Emerging-ArchitectSpecial-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. Q. Could you tell us about the man behind this German Architect and the Artist? A. I gr ew up in the 80s and 90s and it was a moment where we were surrounded with a lot of critical discussions about architecture. My generation went through the 80s with a sombre outlook on the future. In the shadow of the Cold War, we were talking about antinuclear demonstrations, dying forests under acid rain, and Pershing Rockets in Germany. It was all about fear and protection. I wanted to reclaim a future that was taken away when we were young, and I was glad to witness a wide range of people in our generation trying to catch that moment of curiosity about the future. I guess all this lead me to become so interested in our built environment. Q. When was your firm set up and what was the driving factor back then? A. In 1996 I came to Ber lin after gr aduating in Princeton and living in New York for a while, especially to confront a critical architectural education with a quite charged and vivid cultural urban condition. Parallel to establishing a practice, I started teaching, and since then teaching is a major factor in testing the architectural condensations of cultural phenomena. Competitions and smaller art installation projects became the laboratories to
make certain assumptions about the production and performance of the architecture operative. Winning the Stadthaus competition in 1996 became the driving factor to set up my own company. We grew very gradually, and now we are a team of about 20 people working on a highly exciting set of projects nationally and internationally.
Pavilion - KA300 in Karlsruhe
