In Conversation

Anarchy requires a sense of duty: Peter Haimerl

We interviewed one of Bavaria’s most renowned architects about freedom and responsibility, skills (also ones that are lacking), the architectural world’s comfort zone and the future of living in honeycombs.

by Jan Hamer & Ulrich Stefan Knoll in September 2025

Let’s start by saying that we’re missing the Schedlberg house in our port­folio. What’s in the pipeline for the house now?

Renting it out just as a holiday home has proved tricky. The­r­efore, I’ll be orga­nising more Schedlberg aca­demies or incre­asingly offering it as a thinking space. Nowadays, ever­y­thing revolves around target groups and their expec­ta­tions. Online searches are all about hashtags. But the Schedlberg house is more complex and a place you need to expe­rience. It’s stark, rustic and lacks any frills. Relating to it requires the right mindset.

Margit Ulama, who orga­nised the Turn On archi­tecture fes­tival in Vienna, was recently a guest. But the core problem remains. Archi­tects and fans of archi­tecture are usually impo­ve­rished. And the house is too mini­malist and basic for those who do have money.

My problem is that I don’t want this level of comfort –
so no design, no whirlpool or this sup­po­sedly fabulous fur­niture.

We’ll see what the future holds. I’m curr­ently planning an even crazier holiday home in the Bavarian Forest for a client. But guests will pro­bably like this house more because it’s not quite so sparse.

Your pro­jects that we’re familiar with are all in Bavaria. Have you ever built any­thing outside Bavaria?

Sure, in Cin­cinnati for ins­tance. One of the city’s parks fea­tures my Castle of Air pavilion and its awesome mir­rored facades.

And you pro­bably also receive lots of enquiries for pro­jects, even outside Bavaria?

I very rarely receive enquiries about pro­jects. I proac­tively seek out pro­jects in places I’d like to transform and have an imme­diate vision for. The concert hall in Blaibach is the best example.

If I waited for pro­jects,
I’d be dead.

I sought out the mayor and told him that his village was run down. My offer was to take part in a state com­pe­tition on behalf of the village and waive my fee. But I imposed two con­di­tions. Firstly, I wanted free rein to do as I liked in the com­pe­tition and secondly, I was to be made planner if the village won. The mayor agreed, unaware of what lay ahead.

My maxim was that I was looking for people, not prac­tising archi­tecture. I spent a year in Blaibach and talked to 50 people, indi­vi­dually or in groups.

That’s how I found Thomas Bauer, whose idea was to build a concert hall. We went to the local council and announced we were going to build a concert hall. The council applauded the idea but had no extra funding to offer. And said it could cost no more than the car park they would have built in the same location. Which was slated to cost four hundred thousand euros. So I pro­mised I’d build the concert hall for that amount. In the end, it cost the council five hundred thousand euros.   

Thomas Bauer received no money and had to put up a gua­rantee of one hundred thousand euros at the beginning. He pays the concert hall’s heating costs and per­so­nally orga­nises a concert pro­gramme costing 1.2 million euros every year.

But the whole project must have cost more than five hundred thousand euros surely?

The con­s­truction costs were 2.5 million euros gross – including the outdoor faci­lities and all ancillary costs. Thomas Bauer and I managed to obtain sub­sidies from the state. My studio alone acquired about eight hundred thousand euros in spon­sorship. Some 60 com­panies were sponsors and 60 trade­speople worked for nothing – all orga­nised for free in six months.

That’s how we did it in Blaibach. Nobody wants to hear the story, but it has to be told and that’s how we pulled it off.

Most of your col­le­agues wouldn’t do that, what do you say to them?

Yes, I under­stand. We had that same dis­cussion in the office every day. Lots of them counter that I don’t earn any­thing. And it’s true that I pay extra for lots of pro­jects – Blaibach is no exception.

But I always stop and think who would have the chance to build a concert hall in a village in the Bavarian Forest. Or a sub­ter­ranean concert hall in the north of Bavaria.

Who would build the Schedlberg house? Nobody. And, of course, pro­jects like Blaibach are some­thing of a page-turning novel. Ven­tures requiring a touch of lunacy. Because under­taking them requires you to be some­thing of an adre­naline junkie.

But ulti­m­ately the novel does have a happy ending?

Abso­lutely. The venue recently fea­tured Micha Friedmann talking to Igor Levit about love, swiftly fol­lowed by András Schiff giving a fan­tastic piano concert and then a guest appearance by Japanese con­ductor Kent Nagano. The hall has been sold out for 10 years. Our pro­gramme is on a par with any in Munich. And the hall has capacity for 200 people.

And if someone were to approach you with a com­mission, what area would interest you?

Initially, that’s not important. Nowadays, I do things com­pletely dif­fer­ently anyway. If someone contacts me, I conduct a client audit first. That’s the starting point.

It’s usually couples who come to us with a project. My wife draws up a script for two days, detailing the moment they get up to when they go to bed. The script covers ever­y­thing – what they wear, the music they listen to and what they do in the process, how they engage with and what they say to one another. Nobody would think of telling a com­poser how to create a piece of music after all.

By the way, the first con­dition of the audit requires clients to trust their archi­tects who will save them from having what they want.
That might sound a little arrogant, but I’m fed up with this ins­anely ama­teurish approach to archi­tecture.

You called your talk at Archi­tects not Archi­tecture Anarchy and Freedom at the time. Where do these freedom-loving cha­rac­te­ristics of yours stem from?

I come from the Bavarian Forest. Which was always somewhat out in the sticks. Nobody went there of their own free will, only those who hadn’t made it else­where.
And, of course, local government offi­cials who were trans­ferred to the Bavarian Forest from Munich. Which meant that two types of people clashed with one another. On the one hand, you had the sluggish, non-con­formist types and on the other, civil ser­vants who could also be ruthless. Con­se­quently, a basic anar­chist mindset has tra­di­tio­nally evolved over the cen­turies. This mani­fested itself in a usually comical and, above all, very indi­vidual way. In truth, everyone had to muddle along somehow and develop a phi­lo­sophy. Which is also apparent in the con­s­truction style. Ever­ybody deve­loped their own house, which was just like other people’s. Over the cen­turies, a kind of recy­cling aes­thetic evolved that fol­lowed certain rules. And a touch of humour was required to make this aes­thetic bearable.

For ins­tance, there’s a spot at the Schedlberg house with stacked pieces of wooden beams – which is com­pletely absurd of course. The Waidlers (editor’s note: the name of Bavarian Forest locals) were very skilled wood­workers. Which makes you question why they did things like that nevert­heless.
Because their standard retort to neigh­bours ques­tioning the method behind this madness would be “Oh, so you’ve noticed then?” It’s a com­pletely dif­ferent attitude. In this case, archi­tecture is a type of sarcasm whose purpose is really just to per­pe­tuate this mar­gi­na­lised, sluggish society.

Which is why the Bavarian Forest’s story is ultra-modern because it’s pre­cisely the issue facing us.
We have an incre­dibly diverse world and a concept of archi­tecture that sim­plifies and ratio­na­lises ever­y­thing until it’s reduced to purpose or function.
And that hasn’t worked for a long time.

In other words, give archi­tecture and archi­tects freedom – is that the message to the planners?

Archi­tecture must, of course, meet fun­da­mental needs, create spaces that sti­mulate people and that had never existed pre­viously in that form. The under­lying com­plexity is enormous and needs to be trans­lated into images for each person and phi­lo­sophy. I always call it our duty to be con­sis­t­ently restless.

We archi­tects must sta­bilise society by being con­sis­t­ently restless.
Which is exhausting because of the huge respon­si­bility it entails.

In that sense, freedom means doing ever­y­thing as respon­sibly as pos­sible. This type of anarchy requires a huge sense of duty. But I hate repeating myself. It’s boring. Archi­tecture offers so many oppor­tu­nities to not repeat yourself.

Changing the subject: how do you develop the extreme com­plexity in your pro­jects – digi­tally or via models?

Ours was one of the first studios in Germany to start pro­gramming at the end of the 1990s. We’ve been doing ever­y­thing in 3D for 30 years. Model building is not for us because it sim­plifies ever­y­thing too much. To me, archi­tecture is like a film or music. I do, of course, plan spaces via tra­di­tional con­cepts but more by using my mind’s eye.

You use ren­de­rings in a very under­stated way – it’s noti­ceable that the geo­metry is extremely precise. 3D stays 3D and not some kind of fake reality. Is that correct?

The crucial point is when the digital meets 3D. Perhaps I should tell you how I got into archi­tecture in the first place. During my childhood, I always had one dream. It involved me asking whether an interface between the world of con­tem­plation and the material world existed. At some point, I rea­lised that it was very simple. When you code, you can create purely digital, mathe­ma­tical worlds via vectors for ins­tance. For example, I can dis­mantle a town that is build of stone or con­crete.

In other words, I can say that the stone doesn’t exist, but is really just vectors. Or that streams are running through it and I use these streams, or streams of thought to model with. Which makes it all so ama­zingly fasci­nating because ever­y­thing you think about, feel and con­s­truct is the same.

In my case, I stumbled into archi­tecture more by chance. Actually, I was more inte­rested in exploring phi­lo­so­phies and theories. They are what saved me.

Lots of people ask me how I pull off my pro­jects. There are two reasons. Firstly, I usually end up paying out of my own pocket. And secondly, I usually manage to inspire or per­suade people to accompany me on the journey.

But if you do manage to create a world, then those who grasp it will join in. Because they under­stand it.

The problem with us archi­tects is that we try to make ever­y­thing con­sumer fri­endly.
 It’s the same with music.
If you try to appeal to con­sumers, you get pop music.

While on the subject of music, it’s a key feature of many of your pro­jects. Are you a fan of the arts and music?

Well, I’d be the first to admit that I’m the world’s least musical person. But it was fasci­nating that the musi­cians in Blaibach said that this concert hall reminded them of a musical com­po­sition itself.

Based on ever­y­thing you’ve told us, shouldn’t prior com­pletion of a project be man­datory for admission to archi­tec­tural guilds?

Yes, that’s an inte­resting idea. Aspiring archi­tects should be required to build some­thing or be able to present their phi­lo­sophy. And in manner that’s easy to under­stand and cla­rifies what the outcome would be. The fact that the under­lying phi­lo­sophy has taken a back seat in our digi­tally satu­rated, non-material world over the past 20 years is pro­ble­matic. It would appear all the more crucial to prove how mindsets had evolved.

What pro­jects are you curr­ently otherwise working on?

At the moment, it’s pri­marily the honeycomb project.

Oh right, we thought that had already been finished.

No. What you’re referring to is just the pro­totype. The module only con­sists of three ele­ments with which you can build whole towns or cities. That’s actually what I’m exploring. In the first ten years of my studio, I deve­loped urban visions for Europe and pro­grammed archi­tecture. I want to return to that, but with just one product. My honey­combs are a product that other archi­tects can then use.

A company called MAMAWABE now develops the modules and pro­duces them for modular con­s­truction methods. The building in Munich-Riem was a more con­ven­tional type. But I knew that you had to build one first to see how it worked in general and what the response was. When you study the 50 sq m apart­ments there, they look like 80 sq m ones. They are decep­tively spa­cious, but the room volume is the same.

We give archi­tects and society basic modules to apply, add to and combine. All based on our motto that we need dis­ruption to end con­s­truction. Human beings have been living in boxes for 1,000 years. Modernism has done nothing to change that either. But is the box really the best we can do?

Living in honey­combs is simply won­derful and incre­dibly com­mu­ni­cative. You can connect honey­combs and add stair­cases whe­rever you want. The honeycomb is like a piece of Swiss cheese that you can live in. It has niches where you can sit or lie and holes to stash things away in etc.

The clever part is also that, com­pared to normal houses, it’s easy to connect the modules. There are only a few ele­ments – the wall, ceiling and a point where you click the pieces tog­ether and you’re done. I can build whole towns with these three ele­ments. The modules are very simple, replaceable and recy­clable. The expanded clay used has better acoustic cha­rac­te­ristics. It absorbs moisture and is way more sound­proof than standard con­crete. And it’s more sus­tainable of course.

The honey­combs are made in one month, cost com­pa­ra­tively less and aren’t built but deli­vered to the building site ready for use. In other words, they come as pre­fa­bri­cated single parts com­plete with bathroom, lift, surface finishes, the elec­trics and con­nec­tions. What’s more, com­pared with a normal “box”, you can transport vastly more square metres of living space. Which also cuts the carbon foot­print.

The honey­combs can become stan­dalone new builds. But they can also be added to existing buil­dings, or single modules can be used as street fur­niture or bus stops.

And perhaps best of all – forests, which our towns and cities curr­ently lack, can grow on the honey­combs.

How do you plan to implement the project exactly?

I founded the company, but have since sold it. However, I’m still a col­la­bo­rative partner and own licences.

Does that mean you’re setting up pro­duction at the moment? Or are you issuing licenses for others, so to con­s­truction com­panies?

That’s not been fully decided yet. Initially, to allow the con­s­truction of more buil­dings, we’ll defi­nitely be pro­ducing the honeycomb our­selves. It’s pos­sible that the product will be issued on a licencing basis in future. I’ve spent five years on the product non stop, so I want to run the show for as long as pos­sible so that the market launch is perfect.

How did you end up working on the Wogeno project in Munich-Riem?

I just cont­acted the housing coope­rative and pre­sented the idea. Plea­singly, an audience of 70 came and these people then decided whether it would be built. And, by the way, they voted unani­mously in its favour. But you can also see where the problem some­times lies.

Con­ven­tional pro­perty deve­lopers often reject buil­dings with no track record because they don’t know whether people will buy them.
Which is why some ideas don’t even reach the market in the first place.

In general, we need more con­s­truction by housing coope­ra­tives in Germany. Countries like Switz­erland are a step ahead.

I’m counting on manu­fac­turing based on eco­nomies of scale so that we can cut prices, but still achieve better quality than in standard apart­ments.

We’ll cross our fingers and be keeping a keen eye on pro­gress. Thanks for such an enligh­tening interview.

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Peter Haimerl, born in Eben in the Bavarian Forest in 1961, is an architect and has had his own studio since 1991. He lec­tured in Munich, Braun­schweig, Kassel, and Linz, and has been a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts since 2018 and the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts since 2022. His oeuvre deli­berately tran­s­cends the boun­daries of con­ven­tional archi­tecture. His inter­di­sci­plinary pro­cesses spawn uncon­ven­tional, inno­vative con­cepts that marry archi­tecture with art, tech­nology, and society.

Interview: Jan Hamer & Ulrich Stefan Knoll

Image credits: Por­trait photo Peter Haimerl © Edward Beierle (Cover), Schedlberg © Edward Beierle (1–6), New Bay­erwald project Jetzing © peter haimerl . archi­tektur (7, 8, 10, 11), Art stal­lation from beierle.goerlich with Benita Meißner © peter haimerl . archi­tektur (9), Castle of Air, Cin­cinnati © peter haimerl . archi­tektur (12) Concert hall Blaibach © Edward Beierle (13–16), Concert hall Blaibach © peter haimerl . archi­tektur (17), Haus Marteau © Edward Beierle (18–20), Schedlberg © Edward Beierle (21), Wabenhaus © Edward Beierle (22, 24–26), Wabenhaus © peter haimerl . archi­tektur (23, 27)