Atelier ST Mittendrin

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Welcome: Ulrich Müller

Introduction: Moritz van Dülmen

The sound of birds chirping; treetops rustling; a woodpecker pecking methodically into the trunk of a pine tree. In the clearing stands a small house, brightly lit…

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A tractor chugs loudly out of the garage; inside a dead wild boar dangles from the ceiling. In the yard, sand is being shoveled out from a hangar. A man with green overalls enters the windowless building…

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A walnut tree sways its branches in the wind; nearby, a brook rushes past; a church clock strikes 11…

The above excerpt is from the guidelines provided by the architects to their film crew for the three projects portrayed in their exhibition “Mittendrin” (Engl: “Immerse”): a pine forest cabin nestled in the Brandenburg countryside, a forestry building in Eibenstock, and the Martin Luther Archives in Eisleben. It also describes what awaits exhibition visitors, namely a visual and acoustic journey through the sites of these featured projects. In their exhibition, Atelier ST focus consistently on elements that play a central role for the users and occupants of their buildings, but which cannot be represented in plans and models: space and atmosphere. The same idea is pursued in the accompanying films: instead of taking the usual aestheticizing approach to architecture, they highlight the buildings’ everyday use.

Silvia Schellenberg-Thaut and Sebastian Thaut founded their architectural firm Atelier ST in Leipzig in 2005. Since then, they have received widespread acclaim for their work, such as “Forest Cabin” (Klein Köris, 2010), the new District 14 Foresty Building (Eibenstock, 2010), and their project “New Spaces in the Barn” (Sermuth, 2013). Their renovated and expanded Martin Luther Archives building in Eisleben opened in April 2016. Their monograph Architecture and You was published last year by Mitte/Rand publishers.