MASTERcrit

With Jürgen Mayer H

MASTERcrit_ 2017 Overview
By Jasmine Benyamin, Assistant Professor

The sharing economy increasingly becomes our new reality when family structures, nomadic lifestyles, and economic challenges demand new forms reflecting how we live. Mine, yours, ours. Today, those new forms represent transformations of ownership, time-based usage, the common use of services provided, and the organization of social activities that transform our traditional understanding of housing and home. As John Paul Ricco argues in his book, “The decision between us . . . is shared separation.”

The aim of MASTERcrit 2017 was to rethink concepts of collectivity for new housing strategies. To this end students explored themes surrounding intimacy and privacy between the individuals and the communal, between mine, yours and ours, between retreat and engagement, between personal tastes and shared aesthetics.

What is shared and what is separated? Garden, roof, balcony, bathroom, kitchen, recreation, bedroom, etc. These new logistics of sharing also need to acknowledge the role of software in the transformation of urban infrastructures.

As a case study to test these ideas the workshop took on Mies van der Rohe’s Lake Shore Drive apartments (860/880 Lakeshore Drive) in Chicago. The buildings were “unmade” and “erased” in order to then reassemble or “unbecome” new architectural proposals for future housing. Through models and drawings students proposed new relational organizations within the iconic skeleton of the building as well as on its immediate site.

Together Whenever

By Jürgen Mayer H.
The work of J. Mayer H. und Partner, Architekten resides at the intersection of architecture, communication, and new technology. In projects that range in scale from urban planning proposals to buildings, installations, and objects, the firm explores the relationships between the human body, technology, and nature through the lens of new spatial productions.

Jürgen Mayer H. founded the Berlin-based firm in 1996, and was joined in 2014 by partners Andre Santer and Hans Schneider. Mayer H. holds degrees in architecture from the University of Stuttgart, The Cooper Union, and Princeton University. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide. Among his many awards, Mayer H. is the recipient of the Mies van der Rohe Award for Emerging Architects (2003), the Holcim Award (2005), and the Audi Urban Future Award (2010). Jürgen Mayer H. has taught and lectured at Princeton University, University of the Arts Berlin, Harvard University GSD, Kunsthochschule Berlin, the Architectural Association in London, Columbia University, and the University of Toronto.