Michael Nguyen dedicates a photo series to the true masterpieces of facade art by the architecture firm Sauerbruch Hutton. The Photo Artist from Munich shows the first five spectacular buildings of his ongoing Sauerbruch Hutton series: the Munich Re in Munich, the ADAC Headquarters Munich, the M9 Museum, Venice, the GSW Headquarters, Berlin and the Brandhorst Museum, Munich. Visual highlights of the urban have emerged here, the details of which Nguyen examines with precision photography. Sauerbruch Hutton is an international architecture, urban planning and design practice in Berlin, founded in 1989 by Louisa Hutton and Matthias Sauerbruch in London and now based in Berlin.

Masquerade on the Street Stages

written by Prof. Dr. phil. Rainer Funke

Professor of Design Theory. Founding dean of the Department of Design at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences.

Facades are not the faces of buildings, even if we like this metaphor, and the term itself goes back to the Italian "faccia" and the Latin "facies" (face). Almost inextricably linked to their support, building envelopes are usually far too little dynamically linked to the typicity, diversity, and liveliness of the building's interior to communicate this to the outside like a face.

Even with glass facades, there is rarely any real transparency due to the numerous reflections and defensive strategies of the users. This is especially true of large buildings, whose closure and opening to the urban space result from the serial arrangement and variation of identical segments. The continuous change of their appearances is mainly brought about by the change of light in the surrounding space and the interiors along the seasons of the day, and also by the specific enforcement of the surrounding air with differently aggregated water and suspended particles.

Not faces, but rather masks surround us on the streets: more or less statically present in front of the supporting structures and the spaces filled with life, to grasp them, frame them, cultivate them, and provide them with an overarching expression, thus creating euphony or also dissonance in the building concert of the urban space as well-defined, virtuously played instruments.

Munich Re
About the Building

Stacked gold ingots seem to frame the Munich Re. In Nguyen's angled view of a section of the facade, the differently gold-colored cuboids - contrasted by regular geometric black residual forms - appear charged with their power and at the same time recall works of constructivist pictorial art from the early 20th century. Security, stability, and dynamics are associations that correspond to the claim of an insurance company. Since they are staged here as a work of art, they also refer to the promise of not only pursuing monetary goals with the insurance business but also of contributing to the culture of our society.

In the front view, the second picture of Munich Re, we are sent in search of the real spatial relationships between the gold ashlars with an alternation of extremely regular, horizontal parallels of blinds suspended on verticals and mirrored spatial width into the sky blue: grandiose orthogonal facade masquerade out of geometric perfection.

The picture of the red-framed glass fronts is completely different, in which the reflections of the unfoliaged surrounding trees form a poetic contrast to the austerity and perfection of the geometric. Here the masking lives from the mirrored nature, well captured and seemingly dominated in the segments of the glass surfaces. The bordering signal red underlines the will to culture with a visual bang.

The image of the blue is different again. Here it is mirrored distorted grid structures whose soft curves seem to be in supple motion. We are reminded of gently moving water in complete purity, gliding and flowing, that finds its counterpart in the succession of numerous shades of blue.

Color gradients from yellow to green to blue are also the theme of another photo of Munich Re. Introduced by a homogeneous blue behind grey horizontal blinds, mediated by a coarser grid of pale blue glass surfaces, a lively melody of numerous hues unfolds.

GSW Headquarters, Berlin
About the Building

Online Petition to save the GSW Facade

Brandhorst Museum, Munich
About the Building

M9 Museum District, Venice-Mestre
About the Building