Exemplary

To mark the 30th anniversary of Sauerbruch Hutton’s office, the M9 Museum in Venice-Mestre is organizing a major exhibition of the Berlin architects’ work. Fabian Peters visited it.

The streetcar ride from Piazzale Roma in Venice to the city center of Mestre takes just under 35 minutes. Once the streetcar reaches the mainland, it passes through a maze of wide roads. Then it passes shipyards and industrial areas. Finally, there are extensive housing estates with sometimes more, sometimes less attractive apartment buildings until you reach Mestre’s city center. Venice’s districts on the “terra ferma” are the backstage area of the city: necessary, functional and largely unnoticed by visitors. They have long been much larger than the historic districts in the lagoon. Of Venice’s 260,000 inhabitants, fewer than 50,000 live in the historic city. Most of the rest live on the mainland in Mestre and Marghera.

Mestre’s city center is no beauty. But it takes on functions that the city on the water can no longer perform. This is because the entire infrastructure at St. Mark’s Square and the Rialto has long been designed solely for the millions of tourists. For a long time, however, culture resided exclusively on the canals of old Venice. With the M9, Mestre also received a highly acclaimed museum building in 2018.(You can find our review in Baumeister 1/2019.) It was designed by the Berlin architectural firm of Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton, who won a competition in 2010. It therefore made sense for the exhibition to take place there on the occasion of Sauerbruch Hutton’s 30th anniversary. Originally planned to coincide with the Architecture Biennale in summer 2020, it was rescheduled for this year, just like the Biennale.

With “draw love build”, the architects use the large skylight hall of their museum. They make use of a scenography that does not restrict the impressive space in its effect. The pedestals, on which architectural models tell the story of the office, are lined up in a strict grid. Instead of being labeled, each model has a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone. Only the exhibition app then reveals which building it is and shows designs and images of the completed project. A short information text is also provided. Visuals are clearly the main focus of the exhibition concept.

Those who have Sauerbruch Hutton’s multi-colored buildings in mind may be surprised at first glance by the design of the exhibition architecture: The table-like pedestals are filigree constructions made of black steel. Although each wall is painted in a different color, olive green, grey or matt blue remain discreetly in the background. Visitors only notice them at the edges. All attention should be focused on the exhibits.

The models then show in miniature Sauerbruch Hutton’s characteristic play with colored facades. However, the colorfulness that dominates the completed buildings is far less noticeable here. This draws attention to the formal language of the designs. Here, the architects reveal themselves to be followers of a functional and transparent modernism, whose lineage extends from Neues Bauen via Gordon Bunshaft to Norman Foster’s and Jean Nouvel’s buildings of the 1980s and 1990s.

Formal affinities and relationships in Sauerbruch Hutton’s oeuvre can be clearly seen in the direct comparison of the side-by-side models. When viewed together, one is reminded a little of serial art, where a fixed repertoire of forms is varied again and again. The characteristic Sauerbruch Hutton façades in particular, with their colorful graphic patterns, create the impression of a coherent complex of works. In this respect, it is logical that the exhibition does not primarily describe the further development, but allows each model, each design to stand on its own and combines all the works into one large picture.

One would have been a little pleased if the architects had given a more explicit indication of how they interpret their own work. As it is, it is up to the viewer to develop their own view of Sauerbruch Hutton’s work. Fortunately, the museum building itself provides ample visual instruction.

draw love build. L’Architettura di Sauerbruch Hutton
M9 – MUSEO DEL ‘900
Via Giovanni Pascoli 11
30171 Venice Mestre
until January 9, 2022
www.m9museum.it

A symposium will be held on the occasion of the exhibition:

“The future of the architectural profession”

Speakers: Pippo Ciorra, Fernanda De Maio, Homa Farjadi, Nicolas Hannequin, Dirk van den Heuvel, Anh-Linh Ngo, Eric Parry, Gundula Rakowitz, Georg Vrachliotis

Moderation: Luca Molinari, Director of the M9 – Museo del ‘900, and Matthias Sauerbruch

Friday, October 29, 2021 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm

Registration at ufficiogruppi@m9museum.it

For those who would like to visit the exhibition or the symposium at the Museo M9 in Mestre, we already know the right hotel!