Hansjörg Göritz  Studio

October 2015

Axel Schultes' Lamento -

On Architecture

Axel Schultes, master, mentor and friend, recipient of Germany's lifetime Grand BDA-Award 2014 [reference August 2014 post], in his seventies, these days shared in his unique way truly imperative thoughts from his public laudatio response. This excerpt is most valuable to be passed on, particularly into the sketchbooks of Hansjörg's students:

'After by now years of not building I dream myself backwards, far backwards, even further than my friend Leon Krier: - about building totally without any tricks, - without these odd irons in the concrete, - even without sawn tree trunks for a roof, - totally in and by itself, totally clay only, totally lime, totally just stone. Provide me with a few ten-thousand bricks, the beautifully flat Roman type preferably, and let me have my way of arching my own last vault, the Diogenes way, of course. And if it finally was a mosque, I wouldn't mind, - ultimately a project as a murmuring incantation of the imperative… a project for someone who carries the sense that with less than a miracle his work will not succeed on earth'.