The exhibition “Strukturalien – Architecture as urban sculpture” attended to the works of J. MAYER H. from its origins to the present day. Alongside Jürgen Mayer H.´s early, speculative projects and material studies, the majority of the displays presented built projects. Sketches and models provided evidence for the intellectual foundation of his design practice. A video installation projected animated wire frame models, explores the development and translation of J. MAYER H.’s spatial structures into viable sculptures and architecture. Photographs of his buildings acknowledged the spectacular implementation of J. MAYER H.’s spatial research providing a contemporary commentary on the limits of how reality can be represented by architectural means.

Career, background and highlights of J. MAYER H.’s building activities were extensively presented in Berlin for the first time. Focusing on realized projects, the show submited a multi-faceted approach to architecture that is explicitly interested in innovative structural and sculptural solutions.

J. MAYER H.’s fluid-organic architectural vocabulary is not only based on this conceptualization but also on a deep interest in art and specifically sculpture. Moreover, there is a keen fascination from the very beginning in data protection patterns as they appear on the insides of envelopes to make confidential documents illegible from the outside. J. MAYER H. transfers these protection patterns to the three-dimensional world, turning them into visual chains of associations until they become an independent body of architectural explorations. Through its multi-perspectivity this spatial entity eludes all hierarchical aspects and thus all attempts at categorising its functionality. Using new materials and structural inventions, J. MAYER H.’s buildings offer new potentials of developing a better understanding to rethink, re-employ and expand the limits of architecture in the digital age.

Internationally renown for his distinctly experimental and innovative architecture, Jürgen Mayer H. (born 1965 in Stuttgart) is one of the leading architects of his generation. He studied at Stuttgart University, The Cooper Union in New York and at Princeton University. In 1996 he founded the interdisciplinary office J. MAYER H. in Berlin.

Accompanying the exhibition a bilingual flyer has been published. Go to the shop

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Supported by The Berlin borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf – office for further education and culture; the Mayor of Berlin, Senate chancellery – cultural affairs; the association of friends and supporters of Haus am Waldsee