CASPER MUELLER KNEER ARCHITECTS

PHOTOGRAPHY OSMAN ÖZEL

INTERVIEW CAROLINE RYAN

Marianne Mueller and Olaf Kneer from Casper Mueller Kneer Architects talk permanence in the face of ephemerality, framing and display, and the anatomy of a space.

How did you begin working together?

We met in 1993 while studying at the Architectural Association in London. We shared so many common interests, not just in architecture, but also in music, theatre, dance, culture, that you could say we started working together almost immediately. For a while we exchanged ideas, travelled and lived together,before formally founding our first studio in 1997 in Farringdon, London. We also began teaching around the same time and this academic involvement has stayed with usever since. There always was a desire to research and experiment which has driven our personal, professional, and academic work from the beginning until now.

How would you describe your overarching design philosophy?

We are interested in the material and cultural relevance of projects. Our influences are from a wide range of cultural productions, especially art, music, dance, and fashion, on the one hand, and from social and spatial aspects on the other. We would not describe it as a design philosophy but perhaps more like an attitude. There are two areas within design that have always fascinated us. One is around materialities or material realities. We are interested in the idea of material permanence and mineral materials such as stone, the idea of very long time frames embedded in these materials, geological time, and the time frame involved in the aging of materials. The reuse of materials, and the idea of ‘as found’. The experimentation with textures, surfaces, and appearances of these materials is what often follows. How can one treat a material?How many forms can it take? The second area of interest is around geometry and how the geometry of spaces and places can influence how people interact in them, the dialogue between the geometric and the social formation of a place and how the geometry of a space can actively shape this interaction.

What is the starting point of your design process when creating a new space? What interests you?

With each project we are looking for a unique starting point, and what the relevance of the project is, why we are doing it, for what purpose. A particular angle from where to approach the project, an opportunity for exploration. Often this is informed by what we find; by the context in which a project sits or operates, its material, social, and cultural setting or an external interest we bring with us to the project. Once this angle is established, we follow quite a rigorous design process that involves extensive reference systems, geometric, spatial and material explorations and endless testing, both virtual and real. Later this process of testing is extended into material sampling, the building of mock ups and prototypes before the implementation into real spaces.

How do you approach display in the context of art versus fashion?

Working on display projects means putting an object into a scene, making it visible, framing it in the best possible way. It means consciously positioning the object in a space and in relation to a viewer, considering how it should be lit, how it should be seen and against what. This means working on the background and framing of this object and how this enhances the perception of the object through the means of space, light and materials or their deliberate absence. These mechanisms are the same in art and fashion, only the cultural codes vary. When designing a retail space, the environment often changes depending on season, supply, visitors etc. How do you approach these factors? Like art galleries, retail spaces are containers for objects that have not been imagined yet. Like you can never fully predict what an artist will come up with in the context of an art gallery, the same is true for a retail space. You never know what the next collection will be like. Our work is to make this container as strong and robust as possible and to make sure it performs and supports at all levels. In retail, we do not believe in the neutral box and often use strong spatial and material strategies as these spaces need to communicate attitudes and dreams.We work on retail spaces as support structures, open for changing collections, seasons and moods, yet firmly conveying a distinct identity.

We have recently become more and more interested in the idea that our design interventions remain somewhat unclear as to whether they were there before us and we simply excavated them, found them, rather than that they are an obvious intervention. We love to design ambiguous spaces that remain somewhat in the background, even though they would by no means be invisible, sometimes quite the opposite. We are not necessarily interested in drawing attention to our architecture, but more so in the inhabitation of a building, a space, its performance etc. Obviously, we find tremendous beauty in materials, their treatment and application, but we think of them as performative and supportive, sometimes not immediately visible.

What role would you say proportion and scale play in framing objects or garments within a space?

Human scale is central, even though one can play with that, it does not mean that spaces are always of a particular scale because of that, it could be quite the opposite –you can play with large versus small scales. Different to art where the scale is often determined by the work, in fashion you always relate to the body. This relationship can be harnessed to enhance experiences of a viewer / customer in their journey through space. The tall room, the long wall, the small space, the long or short viewing distance, can elevate or exaggerate the content of a space and structure the journey through spatial sequences. Working with scale can provide specific settings for specific objects. It can introduce extreme proximities, adding intimacy to the relationship between viewer and object.

What is the key to designing spaces that elevate, but do not detract, from what’s on display?

We see our spaces as support structures that focus and enhance their content –but never compete with it. These spaces need to have their own identity and rules, almost separate from the content, and live side by side with it. Together, they make a world.

What materials do you gravitate towards when designing a space?

We love working with mineral matter, stone, clay, chalk, sand andtheir geological timeframe and mineral materials such as concrete, glass, ceramics, bricks etc. There is something about the endurance of these materials which have been around for ages and their cultural relevance and circularity.

Materials that can age. This does not mean precious materials necessarily, in fact they could be really simple, but we always like materials which have their own identity and which do not have to be kept pristine and new. We find beauty in aging, in imperfection. We love the idea that the materials we use will be around much longer than us, and will continue to tell their stories of the earth.

When designing a setting for a show where you could be seating 500+ people, how do you go about creating a space that can be easily, and quickly digestible to an audience?

Show sets need to be iconic, conveying a singular vision. However, this does not mean that they have to be simple, rather the contrary. Although they need to have a singular vision, show spaces still have to have a certain complexity to feel natural and real. These spaces need to unfold slowly, details need to emerge while viewing something else. Architecture is primarily perceived in a state of distraction. We try to design show sets that feel real. Fragments of fictional buildings that could have existed but never did.

How do you approach the idea of time in a space? i.e. how much time spent in a space or time to take in a space?

We think of our spaces as permanent, even if we are aware that many of them are temporary. We find that in many of our spaces you lose track of time, which we like. We think of them as spaces you inhabit indefinitely, that envelop and absorb you completely, spaces that ideally you would never leave.