Founded in Berlin in 2001 by architects Simona Malvezzi, Wilfried Kuehn and Johannes Kuehn, the Kuehn Malvezzi studio stands out on the international scene for two main reasons: firstly, for the type of projects it undertakes, mostly in public spaces and very often dedicated to art; secondly, for its approach, at the intersection of spatial design and humanistic-cultural curatorship.
This work has been rewarded with numerous prizes, including the Canadian Architect Award, a nomination for the Mies van der Rohe Award and a place in the final of the DAM Prize for Architecture in Germany. We meet – via computer – Simona Malvezzi, who divides her time between Berlin and Milan, where she has family.
You are Italian and your two partners are German. How did your studio come about?
I was born and raised in Milan, the two Kuehn brothers in Hamburg. But they soon moved away: one went to Holland, the other to Milan to study. That’s where we met. When I finished my studies, I started looking for work – in Milan, but also abroad. I ended up in Vienna, working on the competition to extend the cemetery in Venice, which Chipperfield won.
The owners of the studio didn’t use computers, they made me draw the whole lagoon by hand. But I learnt German. On the art front, which has always been at the center of my interests, I saw that compared to Italy there was more movement, more interest from the institutions, even more subsidies. And the institutional positions, the curators, the directors were young: there was a generational change that was missing in Italy at the time.
Then, with Wilfried and Johannes, we won the competition for documenta 11, founded the studio, moved it to Berlin and continued with projects that were always related to art. We were always more interested in conceptual art than in architecture. We took the process defined by these artists and applied it to building.
Can you give me some examples?We have often approached competitions by going against what the brief required, focusing instead on the real problem to be solved. This is obviously a risk. I’ll give you an example: one of the first projects we won was for the façade of the Berlinische Galerie, where the problem for us was not so much the façade, but the concrete, almost deserted square in front of the museum.
So we imagined a kind of square, like a yellow Scrabble game with black letters, on which all the names of the artists in the museum were written horizontally. It became a space used by children in the area, very popular from an urban point of view. And I could give a thousand other examples, even private projects, where we have always tried to create a public space to give to the city.
Is there any other project that you are particularly attached to?
That of a “House of the Three Religions”, here in Berlin. In 2012 there was a call for tenders to design a building dedicated to the three monotheistic religions (Jewish, Islamic and Protestant Christian). Such spaces exist in places like hotels or airports, but they are always temporary. Here it was a question of marking the three religions that have been present in the area for the longest time, so it was also a political project. We won, and because it was a democratic project, the funds were raised through crowdfunding and similar initiatives.
With this project we were invited to the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Chicago Biennale, and many other exhibitions around the world. And the Victoria & Albert Museum in London funded the wooden model, like those of Renaissance architects, of which the museum has an important collection. Another very interesting museum we did is in Montreal, which has already been built: a museum dedicated to insects, where you enter through an underground labyrinthine path divided into several stations where you can see how an insect sees, touch things as an insect does. At the end of this subterranean path, you enter a large greenhouse with living butterflies and other animals. In this way, a kind of resetting takes place: it is as if the visitor also becomes an insect.
Are you also involved in other types of public spaces, such as hotels or restaurants?
We are doing towers in Tirana, which are hotels with restaurants and other things inside. The hotel now has a lot of things that also function independently: the spa, the restaurant, the gym. In these buildings, the first ten floors are for accommodation and the rest are for living. Again, we try to give a strong public connotation, so the space under the tower is a very open space. We always try to draw attention to what is outside, around the building.
Where does this ‘look elsewhere’ approach come from, especially when it comes to a competition?Partly perhaps because we are masochists, partly because architecture is like psychoanalysis: it brings out what you already have inside. Let me explain myself better. By analyzing what the competition proposes, we also focus on what the underlying problems might be. And we try to solve them. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
Is there a project that you are particularly proud of?
Many, especially those that were not built. We were invited to participate in the competition for the Centre Georges Pompidou, a building that has the force of a manifesto, perhaps Renzo Piano’s most beautiful project, the most radical. Unfortunately, we did not win, but it was an honour for us to be in the shortlist of the five selected.
And for the future?
I like to think that an idea might come up, a call for something that I would never have thought of. I’d also like to think of a city, but even there it’s very difficult: you know, big plans like Le Corbusier’s for Chandigarh. We’ll see.
