Interview with Hans Kollhoff

An important experience for me was the three-year stay in America that I completed right after my studies. And then I must mention the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, that was a change when the periphery became the center. Architects, not just those in Berlin, had previously seen hope and the future in developing the periphery. And suddenly, we had to deal with the center, for which we were unprepared.
I studied at the University of Karlsruhe, where the environment was heavily influenced by Egon Eiermann. It was very functionalist; urbanism played no role. Everything was to be saved by well-built, well-constructed, and crafted architecture. And I took away this quality of building from my studies.
Eiermann assessed projects from the detail level. His students always had gigantic theses; dozens of large hand-drawn formats hung on the walls. Eiermann would comment and critique them during defenses, addressing everything from absolute detail to practical questions such as where the water would flow when it rains?
Karlsruhe then began to feel cramped for me. So, I continued my studies in Vienna, spending a year with Hans Hollein. Thanks to him, I studied buildings in Vienna, mainly by Adolf Loos. For example, I entered the Knize store to see how they worked with wood. I was interested in the international development of architecture, and that's when I fell in love with Italy and its architecture.
The collaboration with Oswald Ungers was a completely new experience for me. Oswald derived architecture from the concept; he was talented in verbal expression and used many visual analogies. His discussions and talks about architecture also appealed to Rem Koolhaas, whom I met through Ungers.

Well-mastered craftsmanship can be a guarantee of all three Vitruvian requirements (venustas-utilitas-firmitas). Can craftsmanship replace theory?
Definitely not! As long as we are only talking about Vitruvius, perhaps. One might say that he is in a way a functionalist. But as we begin with Alberti, theory, morphology, and the joy of contrasts and ambivalence come into play. He brings joy and playfulness into architecture.

Which craftsmanship are you personally closest to?
I am close to craftsmanship as such. I do not recognize today's talks about green or "eco" buildings. That is not applicable to architecture. It has degenerated into mere marketing. When you work on the design of a residential or office building today, it no longer matters who will live and work in the building afterward. The building becomes a brand, a monument for tourism. One could say we are talking about urban marketing. There is a need to produce something absurd so that the tourism business has new attractions. Fortunately, there are few such buildings in Prague, and the substance of Prague is so perfect that it can handle even one Gehry.

For people unfamiliar with your work, the term "historizing architect" is often used, which Karl Friedrich Schinkel also resisted. How do you usually react to and respond to this designation?
I am not historical at all. I understand architecture classically, but not in a classicist way (in the sense of copying some style, language, or period). I am interested in architectural tradition. I study it in detail, as for example today in Prague. We did not look at the monuments; we just walked through the city. And that teaches a person everything.
A classical view for me means searching for how to better shape things we know from the past. Better, according to the possibilities of our time. In other words, to create at least as well as those who came before us and to strive for perfection. We achieve that only rarely, but that effort is the principle of classicity. Architects like Adolf Loos, Mies van der Rohe – or Le Corbusier, too – sought it, although they created differently.

The final shape of the Daimler-Chrysler skyscraper at Potsdamer Platz came from dozens of working models, where you demonstrate that a subconsciously familiar shape can have countless positions. Can this be compared to work on the opposite end of the architectural profession, where minimalists look for an ideal shape through slight changes? Is the Daimler-Chrysler building your fulfilled vision of where Berlin should head in the 21st century?
This is already in the past today. Berlin could have developed like this, but it did not. And that is a shame. The fall of the Berlin Wall was an incredibly fortunate moment, both in German history and in architecture. At this historical moment, we could not imagine anything trivial or petty. All the actors - architects, builders, and investors knew that it was a great moment. The frugality and the quest solely for profit began only later. Today, unfortunately, this effort prevails; it is a disaster.
It wasn't easy back then either. Very controversial urban discussions were taking place, for example. But everyone, including politicians, understood that we could not simply be frugal and create trivial things. Everyone felt that this moment was unique. That's how our projects came to be; we couldn't build them today.



You also build outside German territory. Your houses in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, or The Hague seem to me to be more Dutch and fit better into the urban context than those of many other local architects. How important is humility towards the place for you?
Context is of course important. When we started building in the Netherlands, contextualism was a big topic. Craftsmanship was no longer so important; people were more interested in context. For us, context had already been important beforehand. We spent weeks wandering around Amsterdam, observing it. We were curious, searching for local peculiarities and character. We noticed, for example, how important a role bricks play in the city. But at that time, plaster was the modern material in the Netherlands; all new buildings had to be white plastered, even though it was more expensive than exposed brick. We were fascinated by the Amsterdam School – it was great and strong architecture, those proportions, quality materials! And we decided that we must build like that. And at that time, there were no bricks available in the Netherlands; the brickworks were not operating, so we had to import the material from Germany!

You spent most of your professional life teaching. You dedicated the most time, 25 years, to students at ETH Zurich. What was the cornerstone of your pedagogical work?
I taught construction and design, both of which I focused on very intensively. I was greatly influenced by the theory of analogical architecture by Miroslav Šik. It was a fortunate time. It fostered the search for rationality and architecture that does not suppress history but examines and develops it. That is what I taught my students. In construction, we explored and tested all the new possibilities that were available. In the end, however, we returned to the classical ones – stone, brick, masonry, wood… And we came to the conclusion that we must build traditionally and develop that.
Moreover, teaching was essentially a discussion with students. We walked through cities, for example, Paris. We arrived and said, today we are heading north. We left the center and headed kilometers north. We did not focus on contemporary or well-known buildings, but rather observed the city as such and discussed it. Today, students often think that they are expected to produce some obscure buildings, but they quickly recognized that this is not the way with me.