GRAFT

DISTINCT AMBIGUITY

Architecture must improve our lives, not just in a functionally or artistically precise way. While searching for quality and beauty, complex shape and ambiguity are part of the essence of architecture that transcends the accurate and the distinct.

With the exhibition “Distinct Ambiguity” an extensive portfolio by GRAFT shows aspects and strategies of “grafting”, the associating and connecting of the generally separately perceivable. After the inaugural show in the Berlin museum “Haus am Waldsee” the exhibition which can currently be seen in Hamburg continues at the ArchitekturSalons of AIT in Munich and Cologne (Germany) as well as in Rotterdam (Netherlands).



The architects of GRAFT do not tie their conceptions or validation of artistic structures to eternally ruling dogmata of a monoculture – however they experiment with seemingly contradictory ideas and thereby develop exciting and innovative projects in all domains of design. As a result they create the unexpected, surprising misunderstandings, global transfer of spatial quality and the production of robust crossbreeds – architecture derived from its circumstances, which was only achievable through the grafting of different realities. The seemingly ambiguous or even conflictive is being dissolved in a distinct way.

The English word ‘graft’ provokes a variety of meanings and multiple readings. It stands for transplants in the field of medicine, but also for hard work. In the terminology of botany, grafting is described as the addition of one shoot onto a genetically different host. The positive properties of two genetically different cultures are combined in the new biological hybrid.

For more than 13 years now Gregor Hoheisel, Lars Krückeberg, Wolfram Putz and Thomas Willemeit have been developing complex and timely methods of fusion, some of which contributed essential impulses to current debates on design. With offices in Berlin, Los Angeles and Beijing GRAFT acts and builds at international level. Founded 1998 in Los Angeles, California, GRAFT has 90 employees by now.



The exhibition is as much an introduction to the thoughts and inspirations of the firm as it is an inventory of extraordinary and innovative concepts. The displayed projects are embedded into themes such as Curiosity, Happiness and Courage, whose meanings merge into unreckoned contexts. At the AIT Architektursalon sources of inspiration, plans, concept designs and physical models of buildings and projects are shown in a wide range that reaches from Zero-Energy-Houses in Malaysia to the prototype of Solarkiosk conceived for Africa.
Covering not only architecture, but all kinds of design, the exhibition offers a look into the work of one of the most innovative and cutting-edge architectural studios in Germany.

Everybody who wants to find out why according to the architects at GRAFT the principle of sustainability really is at the core of the term happiness can attend the exhibition DISTINCT AMBIGUITY at different times and locations:

Hamburg: 07.03.2012 – 17.04.2012
Munich: 24.05.2012 – 27.06.2012
Cologne: 23.08.2012 – 04.10.2012
Rotterdam: 12.10.2012 – 19.11.2012

There was also published the catalogue “DISTINCT AMBIGUITY” (Gestalten Verlag) – it is the first book to present GRAFT’s comprehensive body of work.

The exhibition was assembled in Berlin by Haus am Waldsee (23.11.2011 – 12.02.2012).


Photos: Tobias Hein