In Conversation

Art in archi­tecture between expe­riment and pure irra­tio­nality

First Meisterzimmer, now Feuer & Flamme – applying their artistic approach, Jana Gunstheimer and Manfred Mülhaupt create idiosyncratic accommodation with their installations. But how does it actually come about and how do the two of them work? Time for a conversation.

in December 2024

Jana Gunst­heimer and Manfred Mül­haupt caused a stir in 2013 with their Meis­ter­zimmer [Master Rooms] in Leipzig. The revi­ta­li­sation and redesign of four very indi­vidual studio spaces on the site of a former cotton mill is impressive in more ways than one. On the one hand, the rooms con­tinue to bear witness to the cul­tural history of the former indus­trial site, which was founded in 1884. At the same time, the Meis­ter­zimmer have become places that provide their own unique input to the artistic present of the spinning mill itself.

With their new project Feuer & Flamme [Fire and Flame], recently fea­tured on our HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE website, the two have taken on a com­pletely dif­ferent task: the repur­posing of a former fire station in the centre of Kunitz, a wine-growing village near Jena.

Your new project Feuer&Flamme is very unusual, the house looks almost like an instal­lation. How did you approach the con­version and how do you gene­rally work?

Jana & Manfred: We always start by thinking about what appeals to us, what we find exciting and what we feel like doing most at that moment.

In the case of Kunitz, at some point we had the idea of pur­suing a sceno­graphic approach and deve­loping a space that could function like a stage set, in which the guests are the actors who can use and change the backdrop.

In most of our pro­jects, we work with the architect Stefan Adlich, who designed a building for Kunitz that has two striking roof hoods.

This led us to the idea of con­ceiving a kind of semi-detached house. In it, ever­y­thing comes in pairs: mobile kitchen trolleys, sofas, tables, pots, pans, corks­crews are all available in duplicate. One ulterior motive was that guests might like to hold cooking com­pe­ti­tions, with the two kitchen trolleys acting as cha­riots.

This idea in turn led to the next, namely, to create a back­ground against which the cha­riots would function (or glow). In Japanese wood­block prints, there are often crazy colour gra­dients in the back­ground, along with orna­ments, mythical crea­tures, writing and objects arranged in that format. We took a similar approach here. The fur­niture and objects should be able to glow, just like the guests moving around in these rooms.

The wooden structure on the façade and roof responds to the sur­rounding half-tim­bered archi­tecture, but also serves as a trellis for plants.

As a couple how do you implement the concept of process on site in reality?

Jana & Manfred: When we’re in the right mood, it some­times happens by itself, then we fan­tasise and come up with things that could happen there, which are some­times com­pletely absurd.

In our prac­tical work, it is often the case that each of us works on our own area and we more or less leave each other alone. We do have dif­ferent approaches, which com­plement each other well, but some­times also lead to con­flicts.

But basi­cally, it is important to both of us to work in a more expe­ri­mental way, unless it is about tech­nical matters.

And how does your architect get on with your unusual approach?

Jana & Manfred: He is slowly getting used to it. (both smile)
No, seriously. We are a good team, he does ever­y­thing we can’t do – the cubature and all the tech­nology. He also has ideas for interior design, but that’s when we take over.

Do you already have the fur­nis­hings ‘in stock’, are they already waiting for a project some­where?

Jana: Some of the things we use in the apart­ments have already had a life as art instal­la­tions and are then con­verted. I have a large coll­ection of mate­rials in my studio, mainly fabrics: painted can­vases, dyed muslin fabrics, printed or painted cotton. This coll­ection is in con­stant motion. It can be used to make curtains or mat­tress covers. Or they are cut into strips in a labo­rious process, woven and finally made into lamp­shades.

It also works the other way round. Here I find it inte­resting to start from tra­di­tional craft tech­niques, such as the braiding tech­niques used to cover chairs, and to make pic­tures out of them, to con­ceive them in cate­gories of abs­tract painting. From time to time we also find inte­resting things when we travel.

Manfred: While Jana has things in the studio, I find objects on the building site itself. The rem­nants are the inte­resting ones. I get the greatest joy out of trans­forming dif­ficult corners on the building sites into good corners with the help of building site rem­nants. Ideally without the help of DIY stores.

What is your general idea of a holiday home?

Jana & Manfred: When you are on holiday, you want to be free, you want to break out of your own res­traints. We like it when guests have dif­ferent expe­ri­ences to those in everyday life. This also means that not ever­y­thing has to be sen­sible or prac­tical. On holiday, you can put up with a weird wall colour or shrill wall­paper. The main thing is that the beds are com­for­table.

Do your guests receive ‘ins­truc­tions’ in advance?

Jana & Manfred: No. No manual. As in art, the viewers should make up their own minds. But there are often ques­tions from guests and unre­solved mys­teries, as in the case of the neon writing on the kitchen wall. What does it mean? Or: will the roof stay like that?

How did you come to the house in the first place, or rather, how did the house come to you?

Jana & Manfred: We dis­co­vered it years ago while out for a walk. It was like an ugly duckling in the middle of town, which had already caused quite a few hea­daches for some people. Pure ratio­nality was not going to get the building back on its feet, and a purely eco­nomic approach was pro­bably the wrong starting point.

Are there already new ideas or spe­cific pro­jects?

Jana: Yes there are. Par­allel to Kunitz, we have started another con­s­truction site, my parents’ four-sided far­myard, which is located in the border region between the Erz­ge­birge [Ore Moun­tains] and Vogtland.

It’s more of a family project that we’re tackling tog­ether with my sisters, their families and our mother, who still lives there. We started by con­verting the former cowshed into three holiday apart­ments. Then we added two tiny houses and a sauna in the tra­di­tional orchard.

The barn, which we are con­verting, is quite rustic. It has roughly plas­tered walls and many raw sur­faces. I was par­ti­cu­larly inte­rested in a stack of unplaned boards that had been in the barn for 30 years. We built a lot of fur­niture out of them (also because the con­version ended up being much more expensive than planned). Starting with the auto­pro­get­ta­zione  [self-design] building plans by Enzo Mari from 1974, which were used to create the red tables, we deve­loped new fur­niture using a similar prin­ciple.

As with Kunitz, the colours were also important to me in Stall & Sterne  [Stable and Stars]. I referred to the colour nomen­clature of Abraham Gottlob Werner, a geo­logist and mine­ra­logist who taught at the Berg­aka­demie Freiberg [Freiberg Uni­versity of Mining and Tech­nology] in the 18th century. The colours used are derived from the rocks and minerals of the Erz­ge­birge.

And here, too, the studio’s tre­asure trove of mate­rials came into play. Old potato and grain sacks, Czech election posters and unprimed ingrain wall­paper from the GDR were unearthed and can now be seen in various parts of the apart­ments in modified form.

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Interview: con­ducted by Jan Hamer and Ulrich Stefan Knoll

Editor: Ulrich Stefan Knoll

Image credits: © Iona Dutz (house photos Feuer und Flamme / Stall und Sterne), © Jannis Uff­recht (double por­trait), © Jana Gunst­heimer and Manfred Mül­haupt (con­s­truction site and workshop photos)