In the starting blocks

Where would you do an internship today if you could/had to do it again? We recently asked Ansgar Schulz from Schulz und Schulz Architekten this question in an interview for the Baumeister Academy. His answer came like a shot from a pistol. The Leipzig office is taking part in the Baumeister Academy internship program together with MVRDV, AllesWirdGut Architekten and Fuchshuber. In cooperation with Graphisoft and BAU 2021, Baumeister places outstanding architecture students with selected architecture firms every year. The first two Academy winners, Alexandra and Ansgar, are already sitting at their new desks. We introduce them here.

Baumeister dedicated an entire issue to the “Tiny House” in January 2019. The task of the impromptu design for the Baumeister Academy 2019 was nothing less than to sketch such a Tiny House in their own city. The applicants, architecture students from the third semester onwards from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, were asked to take a critical look at the topic. There were no limits to their designs and all forms of presentation were permitted. The main thing was to get the idea across. The four architecture students Ansgar Stadler (TU Munich), Alexandra Tishenko (Saar School of Architecture), Franzisca Rainalter (University of Innsbruck) and Milan Wicke (Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences) succeeded in doing just that. They will complete internships in Leipzig, Rotterdam and Vienna in 2019/2020, financially supported by a scholarship of 2,500 euros.

Ansgar Stadler, 23, from Karlsruhe, is in his seventh bachelor’s semester of architecture at the Technical University of Munich. He has barely returned from a one-year study visit to Singapore when he has already moved on: his Academy internship at Schulz und Schulz in Leipzig started at the beginning of April.

Ansgar’s design harks back to the ancient Greeks. Back in ancient times, the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope decided to live in a wine barrel, albeit for different reasons, as the theme of his philosophy was self-sufficiency, in other words reduction. Ansgar’s design is also dedicated to this reduction – and represents the modern version of Diogenes’ barrel. The result is not an alternative to traditional living. The Tiny House focuses on the essentials: offering people a temporary retreat in a chaotic world. Be it after a night of drinking at the Oktoberfest, a city tour or a visit to the Munich Tollwood Festival – it can be used anywhere a cylinder with a radius of 1.5 meters can fit.

“Everything once, please! The world, an internship and a scholarship too.” – This is how Alexandra Tishenko begins her letter of motivation for the Baumeister Academy. No problem. Born in Russia, she grew up in Germany and is currently studying for a Master’s degree in architecture at the Saar School of Architecture in Saarbrücken. She has been an intern at MVRDV since the beginning of April.

She drew her impromptu design “Lückenbüßer” for the city of Stuttgart, a city that is growing ever closer together and where rents are skyrocketing. For this, she chose a gap on the eastern slope of the city. Alexandra describes it as a “gap in a straight set of teeth” that needs filling. Her answer: modular micro-living for two families of four. A simple wooden construction, a façade made of recycled plastic, solar panels on the south-west side of the roof and a green street façade.

The Baumeister Academy is an internship project of the architecture magazine Baumeister and is supported by GRAPHISOFT and BAU 2019.