bogevischs buero Live

Exhibition
, Foto: Jan Bitter

Foto: Jan Bitter

, Foto: Jan Bitter

Foto: Jan Bitter

, Foto: Jan Bitter

Foto: Jan Bitter

, Foto: Jan Bitter

Foto: Jan Bitter

As with any architecture exhibition, the question of how to transfer real architectural thinking in a temporary surrogate format also plays a central role for bogevischs buero. Their installation for the Architektur Galerie Berlin solves this problem with novelty: Ritz Ritzer and Rainer Hofmann combine two different, essentially independent media and scales achieved only through the visitor’s presence.

To implement this dual approach they asked photographer Julia Knop from Hamburg to produce thematically comprehensive documentation of eight projects. Knop, a photojournalist, lends their work a density reaching far beyond typical architectural photography. She makes architecture as sites the theme of her images; the sites are given their scale and atmosphere only through the user. The partially staged arrangements as informal meeting places also lead to a high degree of formal autonomy with significant power of suggestion.

bogevischs buero confronts these photographs with a walk-in sculpture experienced as tangible architecture. The sculpture is derived from the gallery space as its context, and with the sculpture’s physical presence and strong colors it stands up against the exhibition space’s dominant, rigid geometry. Multiple folds form internal spaces of various sizes, in and between the sculpture and gallery walls. These intermediary spaces within the sculpture serve as independent exhibition cells. Due to the small size of these spaces — compared to the physical proximity between the viewer and object — they “render” the viewer into the image fabric. Simultaneously, the spatial sculpture works as a divider.

Using this dual strategy bogevischs buero succeeds in directing exhibition visitors on two paths that ultimately serve a common goal: The immediate spatial experience creates awareness of Julia Knop’s images and vice versa.

Ritz Ritzer and Rainer Hofmann have worked together since 2000 as bogevischs buero in Munich. Major projects include construction of 1,052 student bungalows in the Olympic Village in Munich (2010), the Laim commercial center (2011) and a research project on energy efficient housing in Ingolstadt Hollerstauden (2011). They are currently working on several large-scale housing projects and a corporate headquarters.