CASA MORGANA

J. MAYER H. und Partner, Architekten mbB is an international award winning architecture office with projects at the intersection of architecture, communication, and new technology. From urban planning schemes and buildings, to installation work and objects with new materials, the relationship between the human body, technology, and nature form the background for a new production of space. J.MAYER.H was founded in 1996 by Juergen Mayer H. in Berlin. In January 2014, Andre Santer and Hans Schneider joined as partners in the firm.

One of their project is Casa Morgana, which is like “an abstract volumetric study for a potential building and seems to have fallen out of context.” Surrounding nature simulates a subtropical oasis and locates the residential sculpture between optical disturbance and atmospheric displacement. The three-story building consists of several differently sized cubes placed at staggered levels on top of one another, connected by a central stairway. The existing building from 1972 and its annexes from 1991 were reduced to their shells and then retaken with targeted interventions: not as a “cosmetic make-over”, but as a location that distils and continues the archaic and brutalist aesthetic from the time of the building’s origin.

Staggered floors and different room heights create vertical links and sequences of rooms. Separating elements between the individual areas are formed as poché spaces and take up different functions. The mirrored walls reflect the exposed concrete, the terrazzo installations appear like cuts through the concrete walls and expose the inner structure of the material. The roughly improved already existing concrete walls also create a hybrid of reduction and projection. The large glass pivoting doors opens the entire living area into an oasis of bamboo, tree trunks, palms and mushrooms designed by the artist Tita Giese.

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Photography by David Franck

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