Non-standard shapes, complex curves, self-generating patterns, all have proliferated in the last few years in response to the infinite capacities of the computer to generate new forms of seemingly unprecedented complexity, a proliferation that thus far seems as immune to the worldwide economic downturn as it often has been to the real problems of architecture. In this hyperactive field of formal experimentation the work of Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton, with its eye-catching pillboxes, boomerang-shaped plans, intricate mosaics of colour patterns and often free-form perimeters, stands ever more resolutely apart, maturing since before the dawn of digital dominance and in a very different crucible of ideas and values.
And, unlike so much of the work of those enthralled with the computer as generator of complexity, Sauerbruch Hutton’s now well-defined architectural vocabulary is as much about the end users of buildings as about its authors. Theirs, however, is a dialogue with users in which the architect no longer, as so often in the 1970s, relinquishes the role of providing strong signature form.
This new issue of 2G magazine presents 15 works and projects of the German-British team, amongst them the Museum Brandhorts in Munich or the Municipal Savings Bank in Oberhausen.
