LOVE architecture Lights on

Exhibition
, Photo: Jan Bitter

Photo: Jan Bitter

LOVE architecture was founded in 1998 by partners Mark Jenewein, Herwig Kleinhapl, and Bernhard Schönherr. The Graz-based studio first gained widespread recognition for its artistic interventions, such as for Kulturhauptstadt Graz (2003). This was followed by numerous building projects, including the Climate Protection Supermarket in Graz (2011), the residential, office and retail building Doninpark in Vienna (2013), the Baufeld 10 apartment building in Hamburg’s HafenCity (2008), and the Shoppingcenter Arena that was recently completed in Salzburg (2015). Currently, the firm is working on a new company headquarters for 50Hertz in Berlin.

LOVE architecture develops individual creative solutions for each of its projects. However, there is a guiding principle that recurs throughout their work: the focus on an essentially simple concept that is formulated in a complex way, and which determines the project’s formal identity.

The 50Hertz project serves as the basis for LOVE architecture’s exhibition concept at Architektur Galerie Berlin, making reference to the net-like support structure that forms and architecturally arranges the building’s outer shell. At night, the structure’s beams will be selectively illuminated to create sinusoidal curves along the façade, so that the 50Hertz building appears to be contained within a different structure than during the day. Multiple possibilities for interpretation will give rise to new perceptual scenarios that foster further layers of meaning.

The underlying principle of change or layering is adopted as an installation in the gallery and translated according to its spatial realities. A network of diamond-like neon tubes running along the inner walls of the gallery space illuminates the space in changing lighting dramaturgies. Different structures and interpretations are produced, while the basic grid structure remains visible. Switches are used to individually vary the intensity of the lights, illumination patterns, and spatial atmosphere. The latticework of light and energy seems to “dematerialize” the gallery walls behind it, so that they seem to dissipate in unison.