To the death of Matthiase Ricka

Berlin has many faces, and everyone will soon find their world here. While only a narrow circle of architects seeks a path to Berlin's rationalists, the Berlin raumlabor engages a wide lay audience with its spontaneity and humanity. Thanks to the two-year presence of raumlabor at the Prague VŠUP, we were able to experience architectural activism firsthand, whose essence is communication and dialogue. Their goal is to create places where people can meet, discuss, and celebrate. Their buildings prioritize the people who will use them first, and then the aesthetics of the constructed. They do not aim for their buildings to immediately solve problems but to serve as a mediator and intermediary that will ask people about their wishes. Their installations connect people and ideas.
In 2002, Matthias Rick joined raumlabor_berlin. Through their joint experiments, they managed to make urbanism questions accessible to a wide audience. When promoting architectural ideas, he often employed methods characteristic of artistic and theatrical associations. Thanks to these unusual approaches, he quickly garnered significant international attention. His experiments contributed to a different understanding of the architectural discipline and the further expansion of its borders. Matthias Rick drew the entire environment with his energy. Over the past decade, he organized (together with raumlabor_berlin) countless workshops around the world, including several projects in the Czech Republic.
Matthias Rick unexpectedly passed away during his sleep on the night of April 28, 2012, in the Brandenburg town of Stolezenhagen, where he had come to pick up a sculpture for the Berlin exhibition "Grosse Weltausstelung 2012." He was only 47 years old.