Staufer & Hasler

Beat Schläpfer
in conversation with
Astrid Staufer and Thomas Hasler
“Building, Research, Teaching”

 

Astrid Staufer and Thomas Hasler have been working together since 1994 in their architectural firm in Frauenfeld. They have become known for building projects that consistently engage with local conditions, and for unifying profound reflection with practical and theoretical research work. In addition, their extended engagement as teachers has benefited students from Geneva to Winterthur, Zurich, Lausanne and Vienna, and continues to flourish. They also publish regularly on various themes. This multi-dimensionality is in and of itself something special. An exceptional characteristic of Staufer-Hasler productions is the manner in which they integrate these various fields. Research meets with project work, project work with teaching. Their building, research and teaching are all well-documented.

Beat Schläpfer :
Let us begin with the unusual, the meaning that you attribute to language. Why read and write about architecture?
Astrid Staufer :
I suspect that the commonly assumed “prerequisites” for an education in architecture are clichés : being able to draw well, and being good at arithmetic. Drawing epitomises the creative aspect of the profession, arithmetic the technical. And actually it seems today that our profession has been reduced to having good ideas, technically administering them
and producing pictures. In the process we forget the most important factor. Vitruvius says that the first prerequisite for the practice of architecture is literacy : the capacity to express oneself in language. Only afterwards does he include drawing, geometry, arithmetic, history, philosophy and so on. In our opinion the capacity for linguistic expression as a vehicle for the sharpening of consciousness is sometimes underestimated in our discipline. We would like to oppose this development in our teaching, as well as in our reflections on our own planning decisions.

BS
You mean that you engage language, because for you, the other instrumentsare not enough or simply too dominant?
Thomas Hasler :
Behind this is actually the search for logic. Some understand drawing simply as drawing, as watercolours, as cloudy, as artistic expressions. On the other hand, a picture can also contain a certain logic. Insofar as it shows a construction, it becomes an expression of a logic—and that binds it with our object, the building. And if the logic cannot be captured in words, often it’s missing.
AS
In our field one has to be careful with the term ‘logic’, as it often leads to a tendency to pseudo-“constructions logic”. This is the doctrine that everything is analysable, and everything only has to be be logically constructed, in order to reach the correct solution. Here I praise Aldo Rossi : according to him good solutions were nourished through the constant leaping between “ratio”, that is the objective level, and “emotion”, that is subjective perception that is personally filtered and based on individual experience. For this switching back and
forth, written expression is a good instrument, because it also transports emotional moments of thought, its development and formation. Language is absolutely not just applied in our teaching as a consciousness-sharpening instrument, but also as a motor of development. It can help in the development of space and structure, and in producing and centering representations.

BS
I would like to refer to the acknowledgement of Aldo Rossi that Asi mentioned and confront it with an observation by Pierre Thomé. Pierre Thomé, the theorist of drawing, specialist in the graphic novel and non-fictional illustration as well as co-founder of the comic magazine Strapazin, writes : “When we observe ourselves in the act of drawing, then that alters our thoughts, and with our thoughts alters the drawing. A little like when someone stands between two mirrors and the reflected image repeats itself to infinity. If one raises an arm, it appears as if there was a tiny delay, as if one could see into the past. In this way, drawing becomes the magic mirror to our thought.”
TH
Between two mirrors, that pleases me, a beautiful image. With this mutual influence, this difference between the instruments, I can set to work. It confirms an experience that we have had with students. What is drawn is not exactly the same as what is thought, and this difference makes possible the reflection back and forth. In the ideal case, we thereby achieve a lever for further discoveries. The process is similar to that of a mountain climber, who, in a crevice, climbs from one stone to the next and thereby ascends.

BS
In the case of drawing, we have the hand-made sketch on one hand, and the computer drawing on the other. Do they correspond on the level of language to two distinct functions?
AS
Language demands, like the computer, great precision from the first step. And it happens that we use this trick often, that one can use it in a literary fashion. Thereby it contains a similar dynamic to the hand-made sketch, but raised to another level. When one of our students writes, “my building stands aloft in the vineyard and celebrates”, then this sentence paints, sketches, suggests the expression of her project. The sentence helps us beyond the marks of the drawing to encircle the effect. The constant springing between drawing, text and model also help us supervise our students. Some can do one thing well, some can do another. So we achieve access to them on various levels, whether to challenge and support, and we can involve them in our synchronous design process (as we call our approach), where they are their most productive.

BS You open the door where you believe that the students best find their way in …
AS
Exactly, but language doesn’t just serve as a design-generating machine, but furthermore to the sharpening of consciousness. Part of that is reading, informing oneself. In principle everything that we achieve has been around for centuries, and our task is to arrange it and interpret it. Getting acquainted with the literature and the history of architecture serves the accumulation of a resource for one’s own production. In my second year as a student I presented one of the assistant teachers, Marcel Meili, with a graphic of a floor plan as the concept for a design. He asked me why I had placed a right-angled corner in one position and not another. “No idea, a gut instinct”, I answered, and he responded : “And you would rather not know where it came from ? If you want to find out, I can recommend a book on Russian Constructivism that lays out the rules of composition.” And so was initiated into this world in which one wants to deal with matters
from their origins.

BS The assistants are the most important teachers …
AS
The assistants are the central figures in the development, because the professor is so elevated, distant from the concrete task of drawing.

BS And your most important teachers and role models, Thomas?
TH In my case that worked out somewhat differently. It developed in stages, in the beginning with training as a carpenter. I had a teacher who taught me something very interesting, in particular, that time plays no role. It is exclusively a question of quality. Time was a matter of indifference to the verge of neglect. He was always unpunctual. He was notorious for this. It could happen that he had promised someone furniture for a bedroom — it was in those days still often made to measure — and he would have promised it by Christmas. Christmas came, and the bedroom was not ready. The customer would complain “but it’s already Christmas !”, and he would simply respond “Christmas will come a few times more”. Time simply didn’t play a role. What was important was that the work was well done. Afterwards I worked in a carpenter shop in America. There it was the complete opposite. There, time was the essence, and quality was a matter of indifference. Sending a customer something good was a waste of money, as it had taken too much time. A bitter lesson.

BS How did you come to architecture in the first place?
TH
It was rather a coincidence that took me in this direction, and the conscious decision for architecture was heavily dependent on the resultant enthusiasm. In this context I would like to name someone, Heinrich Helfenstein, who isn’t an architect, but rather a historian. As a teacher, he woke in me an enthusiasm for the reading of landscape, cultural landscape and its historicity. That was something decisive.

BS After your studies you rapidly entered into teaching. Were there ruptures with your own education, or do you see it all rather as a continuum?
TH
Asi and I had various people that we related to. For me, Marcel Meili was also important, as he encouraged us and we were fascinated with him, as well Markus Peter later. Decisive however was that I began a research project and busied myself with Rudolf Schwarz. Schwarz (1897–1961) was usually known as a German builder of churches. But almost more important appeared to me his activity as an author of texts on the relationship between human work and the construction of worlds. In the process, I became acquainted with a whole new world, and here Bruno Reichlin came into my development. The morphological and the poetic became important. Well-formed writing, well-formed speech : I was baptised in this cosmos, a philosophy that in particular in the beginning of the twentieth century was widely known and had entire libraries of books dedicated to it. Take for example the writing of Ernst Cassirer, to name only one. The sentence that you quoted, Asi, of the building that stands from the vineyard and celebrates, could come out of this world.
AS
For me it was enriching to be able to study in the 1980s, in a period in which new positions formed. Around the professorial chair of Mario Campi people with the most varied attitudes were united. Their opinions were continually negotiated, which opened a central idea for me, namely that in our “craft” there is no universally valid, binding set of rules and that rather we must take our positions ourselves from our filtered perceptions of reality. Every decision we make, subjective as it is, has consequences and determines the steps we take afterwards. These methods, won from experience, we attempt to communicate, in order to cultivate autonomous thought and intelligent design.

BS You talk of the experiences you have had, in quite varying educational institutions : in Geneva and Winterthur, in Zürich, Lausanne and Vienna.
AS After our separate positions as assistants at the ETH Zurich, Thomas taught initially in Geneva, while I worked in Winterthur at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. In parallel to the establishment of our shared office we therefore initially worked alone as teachers, until we could work together at the ETH Zurich, then as professors at the ETH Lausane (EPFL) and ultimately appointed at TU in Vienna. In Lausanne our methods functioned optimally because of the size of the classes, but also because we productively distributed our work. Thomas dealt with the urban planning aspect of the project in the first semester, whereas in the second half year I developed the expression and the interior life of the buildings. We were supported by very engaged coworkers, including an assistant who exclusively dedicated herself to the texts. Because the students are not practiced enough in this, one has to push continuously, as otherwise they
continually get worse. We presented texts collected in readers, ordered them thematically, and read them. We rented a theatre and hired actors who performed the texts on stage. So it came to be that “ignition phrases” appeared for the process of design, that with a few words could capture the character of the project : “Un cocon caché en pleine ville” (a cocoon hidden in the city). Unlike the German-speaking Swiss, who have difficulty with texts, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland we struck upon a great love of literary expression, and a highly cultivated artistry of speech.
TH And that was something that naturally didn’t work in Vienna. It was clear from the beginning that this would not be possible, not with 750 students in the foundational course, that is, 29 classes (laughs). The Lausanne method was one of a kind.

BS You must have to react very flexibly, when you are up against 750 students in the foundational course. Do you have to rediscover your methods constantly?
AS
We adapt the method of so-called “synchronous design” continuously to new conditions : to the situation of education, to our consultative capacities and above all to the number of students. In Winterthur, a technical college where the majority of students come from construction work, “synchronous design” was called as much from the very beginning. There it was about the parallel editing of various scales : on the continual shifting from the largest urban scale to the smallest detail. At the ETH Zurich the synchronous project work mutated into a shifting between
the design instruments of writing, model and drawing. In Lausanne we could put both approaches together and sharpen them. And in Vienna, ultimately — admittedly under the more difficult conditions of our drastically higher number of students — we could develop our teaching methods over multiple semesters.
AS
The question (in Vienna) was : how does one pedagogically move forward, so that the students learn something ? The introduction was presented in lectures in a large auditorium. How does one transmit content, especially to a very mixed audience, many of them from the East and with limited foreign-language skills ? The path lead us to a bipolar position, between the most exacting language of architecture possible, and continuous sketching exercises for the students. Later, after the examinations, we had repeated positive responses, such as “I would like to express my gratitude for the instruction that one should draw in a manner so that one can later still perceive the building and the construction.”
AS When you look at our biographies, you could ask yourself why we change university every four years.

BS One could ask that, yes.
AS
It is not the case that somewhere didn’t please us. Rather, it was because we saw these modifications of our teaching methods under various conditions as a challenge. In the course of time we could accumulate valuable knowledge, experience and strategies. In the same way that we design various buildings in our offices, we also design various teaching structures in the universities and colleges. The core remains the same — the communication of simultaneous thinking and negotiating — with step-by-step assimilation of the complexity that we must remain true to, in our profession.

BS There is barely a type of building that you have not wrestled with : cinemas, hospitals, administration buildings, radio towers…
AS
domestic buildings, (laughs) cow sheds …

BS School buildings …
TH
Courts …

BS From the hospital to the church, from the birth to the farewell, one sees you’ve engaged with nearly every aspect of human life.
AS
That’s what interests me so much about the profession of architecture. It is not just a delight in space as an abstraction, or in sculptural form. The profession fascinates me because it allows us to examine life in depth, in all its aspects, and in a detailed way. We have to profoundly engage with the various obligations and activities of a life, as well as their historical origins. In the end, I understand my work as research about life, about existence, and about what it is to be human.

BS Are there commonalities, or is every building a case on its own, where you have to begin again from the foundations?
AS
What connects all our projects — sometimes more explicitly, sometimes subliminally — is doubtless our interest in the expression of the construction, that proceeds from the constraints of the particular method of building. Sounding out the potential of various kinds of construction, teasing out the characteristics of the material : that’s what interests us.
TH
There is always a constructive logic in combination with the material and the expression. One seeks the expression with the means of the construction, and this in turn has a lot to do with utility. Vitruvius brought that down to the most simple formula imaginable : “It accords with the fundamental needs of a person to create a room.” There’s a start : that is to some extent the challenge. Our task is to build a space. Furthermore, we have to concern ourselves with its longevity, its usefulness, and its beauty.
AS
In the case of a wooden building like the Kantonsschule in Wil this is visible in the additive and associative logic. In the case of a façade-wearing structure, like the cinema RiffRaff in Zurich, it’s somewhat harder to see. But even there, the wide spans are made thematic and visible by hanging panes, something that derives from the logic of the construction. For us it is always the goal for the character of the construction or the materiality to find an adequate expression and to create an inner atmosphere from it.

BS And in the ideal case one achieves a building in which all that comes together. What is your ideal case ? Which building would you say really succeeds?
TH
Yes, where is success ? Let’s take as an example this small house on the Weiher. This was an attempt to develop a construction that would become form. The curious thing with this house was that it was a wooden construction, and in wooden architecture the construction is usually more decisive. In addition, the entire thing sits on a moor that takes relatively little weight, so it had to be light. With light wooden buildings one can evoke atmosphere. And suddenly it transpired : one went from braces and beams to form and expression. But to maintain that this expression was derived entirely from the construction would be a little bit inaccurate. Sometimes the construction is manipulated a little. But when the form in the end must speak, then it would be perhaps excusable that one had fought one’s way through … In this case it seems to have been a success, as many people speak to us about it, and they are the final measure. The process succeeds in some buildings more, and in some buildings perhaps less.
AS
Viewers, such as photographers, often talk about extremely external, formal aspects in our work. One slightly bitter realisation is that space is difficult to capture in the fast pictures that stream past us in today’s media. It would be ideal for us if every person could perceive architecture in its multiple aspects without instruction. Unfortunately this ‘natural’ capacity of the viewer is — through the flood of images and the cult of the star architect — increasingly deformed.

BS In the sense of a loss of discrimination …
AS
Yes, a loss of discrimination. As a result many remain caught up in secondary considerations. That’s something of a shame. In principle the really successful buildings are those where the form not only speaks for itself, but also comes into harmony with the space and the construction. The result produces a deep, calming effect. However to capture and communicate this spatial character proves to be increasingly difficult. We live in a time heavily defined by form. TTo speak about space is a challenge even amongst architects, let alone in public. Often we lack the vocabulary. Often we lack the vocabulary.

BS And even so, there’s a sense of well-being, a basic experience of pleasure, at being in a room one enjoys.
TH
Yes, the rooms are very important, and one has to feel comfortable in them. There as well there is a problem of communication. For example, the Federal Administrative Court that we celebrated the opening of in 2012. Normally its interior is closed to normal mortals. One cannot enter. So the majority cannot see the inside of the building, but only the façade.

BS On the theme of research, one of the thee pillars of your activity : can you say something about the importance of research in your work?
AS
For us, architectural research means reflecting on the production of effects and pursuing content. Observing how the effect of rooms and designs is produced allow us to better comprehend and control our own activities. It was partly for this reason, at least, that I studied the still little-known Milanese architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni for many years. He was difficult to reach for verbal discussions, which compelled me to study his attitude to design and his discoveries through the reverse decryption of his buildings — actually the opposite process that we otherwise undertake as practicing architects.

TH
Here I have to speak again about written work. There are architects these days who produce a lot of book-length studies and investigate old houses. At the beginning of my studies at the end of the 1970s, there was a different view. On the basis of a badly-understood modernity, it was said that older buildings were without meaning for new architecture : everything before 1920 was irrelevant. Up until the 1960s and the 1970s that was often taught. Not only that, I believe that most architects barely understand baroque space, or that they could learn something from it. They are overwhelmed by this ‘out of date’ technique of building. I don’t want to denigrate, but it appears to be so. The same is true for historical church buildings. One cannot employ them as historical material for contemporary architecture.
AS
Why not ? That is really new to me.
I wouldn’t see it so pessimistically.
TH
When the form is too directly present, it can disorient, and it’s hard to work with. However there is the possibility of moulding form. In the structural description of a historical building a lot falls to the side, such as the ornament, which is to say the whole field that the period itself was preoccupied with. Let us imagine that someone describes a particular room, for example a baroque church, or takes a literary text : “High above a ray of light marches through the window, and sets the dignified room alight with warm fire”, as it runs in one of Stifter’s stories (Das alte Siegel, 1843). Through the formulation, knowledge is possible. That would be an analogous transfer with the aide of speech, that allows a return transfer to contemporary architecture. That’s something exciting — a work of translation, so to speak, there and back again, that allows a further engagement, or indeed makes it possible. This is something that I learned from research.

BS Traditions live on, although in any case their influence is often only indirectly perceptible.
AS
Yes, conscious deviations come from the same historical tradition as the guidelines and rules for permissible combinations. They indicate the field of play. It lies near at hand, indeed it is our task, to consciously and individualistically extend these tools, which is to say, to develop them further. At the same time, we need to respect the collective connections and indeed make them legible.

BS There is a radiant text by the Danish poet Inger Christensen on the nature of beauty and the quality of literature, that is perhaps applicable to architecture. The title in German is “Der Geheimniszustand” (“the state of secrecy”) : “Wenn das Gedicht gut ist, haben die Worte so viel Energie, dass auch die schwersten Themen schweben können ; wenn das Gedicht schlecht ist, beschwert es nicht nur alles, was der Leser hineinzulegen versucht, sondern auch sich selbst. Es gibt keine sicheren Methoden dafür, zu entscheiden, ob ein Gedicht schön oder banal, gut oder schlecht ist. Das Beste, was man in der Praxis tun kann, ist, die Mengen von Gedichten zu lesen, die von anderen geschrieben sind ; aber auch wirklich die Gedichte zu lesen, die man selber schreibt, das heisst, sie die ganze Zeit, während man sie schreibt, umzuschreiben, bis sie zuletzt irgendein Licht zurückwerfen, irgendeine Einsicht, so als wären sie von anderen, von einem anderen geschrieben.”
TH
One could explain Gothic vaults so well that the stones would fly … and that is beautiful : “As if the poem were written by another” — validity and magnanimity. If those words can be applied to architecture, that would be worth striving for.
AS
There’s doubtless a great difference between the methods of a poet, and ours. In architecture we have many more means that we can allow to influence each other. The model, the sketch, the computer plan, the building site. It is a multiplicity of instruments that we somehow have to bring into concert. I ask myself sometimes how it is even possible. Add to that the uncountable additional actors : contractors, colleagues, planners, specialists, officials, and so on. With writing, in contrast, one works alone. For this reason, I am caught by a formulation of the question : how is it that people in our metier manage to “edit” their text, up until the plan, the final building, “throws back a light, an insight, as if it was written by another”. How does one manage that?

BS Yes, how do you do it ? In addition, unlike Inger Christensen, you have deadlines that you have to keep to, that expire sometime or another, although, as Thomas Hasler’s first teacher would have said, “Christmas will come again next year.” Is there a moment, in which one can say, “Now we have it !”?
TH No, no, the advantage with building is that at some point it is the building itself that sets the rhythm. And then you know what you have to do. And every now and again, it happens that shortly before Christmas, something changes.

BS Do you know of an example, where you could have said : now we are ready, tomorrow we could start. But the beginning of construction is another six months away?
TH
And we know everything about it? No, never.
AS
Hm … (shakes her head). One can always improve every detail, until the axe — orrather the hammer — falls. But this question about “how ?” : we must know how this process functions, we have 20 years of practicing it. But if I had to describe it (as beautifully as Inger Christensen does), to describe in words what happens, it would come close to being a research project in itself.
TH
It is a cloud. Somehow you have to make it objective, and this objectification does not proceed as a one, two, three, four, five … but in this nebulous space. Only so does the picture sharpen, take three-dimensional form, and step by step become a design. You have to note, where you need to sharpen it, not just at the bottom corner, with everything else left in the mist. Everything must be brought into balance, so that you don’t experience any unwanted surprises. That is the process of design.

BS This relationship to tradition is not a matter of course for all contemporary architects. Let’s try a game. I would name some names and you provide me with some keywords. — Frank O. Gehry?
AS
The Bilbao effect. Globalisation. A shame, a terrible loss for cultural diversity. Our objective would be to create from the local. We hope to oppose globalisation, and its concomittant boredom, with something attractive : the specific, the unique.

BS Peter Märkli?
AS
In the first instance impressive in the modesty of his presentation of his own development as an architect, namely : “At first I build one room, then two, then three …” A beautiful picture of our craft. The wisdom not to want to do everything simultaneously, and the knowledge to not know everything. Secondly, a continual improvisation upon the keys of architectonics, even when it is worked out subjectively.

BS Coop Himmelb(l)au?
TH A product of the art of provocation, which ends in marketing. “Architecture must burn, architecture must hurt, architecture must cut.” Those are their words, but actually, it all means “marketing”. Actually a misuse of language, if words are used to provide a fig leaf for a provocation. The concepts are thereby sold out for entire generations. A patented provocation!

BS Jean Nouvel?
AS
In contrast, a strong brand.

BS Peter Zumthor?
AS
Slowness, in a beautiful sense. Solidarity, depth.
TH
… a stage designer of atmosphere …
AS
… a crusader for atmosphere, nearly !
(laughs)

BS Tadao Ando?
AS
A mystery. What one sees in the images carries so much promise, and one hopes that the reality is as touching. A mystery : one of the few who manages to contradict what we have said about the impossibility of presenting space with photography.
TH
A spatial icon, and a material icon.

BS Herzog & de Meuron?
TH
Endless fireworks, and with everbigger bangs. One memory of a Bastille Day of many years ago. We were in Nice, and there was an impressive fireworks display. One rocket after the next for a half an hour, always bigger and better. Forty minutes, and it didn’t let up. Eventually my small son made a comment, because he couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to go to sleep : “And now just one more good rocket, and then they can stop!”
(all laugh)

BS After this small warm-up : How do you approach your everyday work ? Equally playfully? You’ve known each other for 30 years and worked in the most various roles together. What are the preconditions so that the fire doesn’t go out, so that the collaborative work remains lively ? You’ve gone a long way together …
AS
We have regular exchanges, are very different from each other, and complement each other well for that reason, but of course we also argue. We have to exchange psychological moments so that we can work together at all. It is not just a matter of building. It is also a question of how one interacts, how we mutually nourish each other … I cannot remember a time when we did not trust ourselves to ask something of each other. I am a person who questions everything, also between us. Everything, always starting afresh. It’s sometimes a drag, isn’t it, Thomas?
TH
Yes, but it’s also good. I’m not superficial, but sometimes (laughs), I would prefer to try to be … but it rarely works !
AS
What might complement our cooperation, and also draw an arc back to the beginning : Within the complex structure of a large office, language becomes a very important means. We can’t draw everything between the two of us anymore, we cannot design and sketch as we did in the beginning. So for us, pictorial language becomes useful, a crucial medium. It can, as in teaching, also in practice, act as a design motor. In the same way that the work of a student can turn on a single sentence, our team often assembles around a verbal construct. This can be of great importance
for the research process. All can work together on a collective theme. As a result, our pillars — teaching, research and building — are genuinely synergetic. The most important thing for both of us is mutual respect. It takes work to hold this respect perpetually alive, as we also have different backgrounds, inclinations, characters, modes of expression, habits of thought and life philosophies. But at the same time, there is so much that is shared. We need to talk about what we have in common, and how we differ.
TH
About the things we have in common, we often do not speak. They are simply the prerequisites.

BS In closing, a short glance to the future. Do you have an idea of where you will be in ten years? Are there important projects or ideas, that up until now have fallen short, and about which you are curious?
TH
We aren’t really moving forward strategically, in the sense of : “I’ll do this and not that ; that would be a disadvantage to us, but this is useful.” If we have to make a decision, however, between quality and its opposite, then we know what we have to do.
AS
Neither of us had some kind of career planned out in our heads. We would never in a dream have imagined we would wake up one day with sixty employees. We began as just the two of us, in one small room below, and we were happy. It simply worked out this way. We have constantly sought to experience joy in the work that we did, and to simply leave behind what caused us less joy. The fact that we had three pillars ; namely research and teaching as well as the office, gave us a great freedom in our decisions (economically as well), a really valuable independence. In this sense, our threelegged construction has maintained its value.
TH
I would like to answer the question of planning from one other side as well. There isn’t just the planning, there’s also the daily obligations, the essentials. You therefore have a project that you constantly have to examine, whose clear structure you have to protect. With the design, the project seems defined, but you have to care for it, and constantly keep on the alert to make sure no one waters it down. One has to protect the design. On all sides, various people with specialist knowledge and good intentions come into the plan and can break it to pieces. You have to hold them distant. And this is particularly important for long term and large projects. But a strategy? It’s rather a mission.
AS
It is my strategy to have friends. In the end we found a difference! But back to you Thomas, what would you wish for the future ?
TH
Hmmm … Somehow one always has a conscience, and the temptation to improve the world a little. In Büchner’s novel Lenz it says something like “God made the world as it should be, and our only striving should therefore be to imitate it a little.” So one has a contribution to make in any vocation, and that preoccupies me. We are currently occupied with city planning questions, and even there, I have the feeling that I have to protect something.

BS Protect, guard, preserve …
TH
… and improve. Guard against the ignorance of the technocrats, for example … Ten years : a mandate for ten years to get the environment on the right track without being constantly threatened by technocrats. That would be my wish.
AS
What a nice wish : to protect something. And my wish would be : to pass something on that I once received!

BS Many thanks.
What a lovely way to end the conversation. 

This interview is available in the Prix Meret Oppenheim 2015 publication in German (pp. 14-29) and English.