In Conversation

Between the Uckermark and Urbanity: in con­ver­sation with Thomas Kröger

How are spaces created that go beyond convention? Thomas Kröger talks about architecture and art, complex projects involving existing buildings, serial construction and the pleasure of taking typologies further.

by Ulrich Stefan Knoll & Jan Hamer in September 2026

Hello Thomas, we’re delighted you could find time for us just before the weekend! We’ve just been in Porto for our HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE partners’ meeting. When does work actually start on your project there, the con­version of a tram depot into a tram museum?

We’re right in the middle of it! The project has a long history, though. It was the first com­pe­tition we entered, back in 2010 – and, much to our sur­prise, we won it. What fol­lowed was a won­derful expe­rience: we were so warmly wel­comed by the Por­tu­guese, and a very refined form of col­la­bo­ration deve­loped. That was also true of our work with the engi­neers at afa­consult, who are involved in many public and larger private pro­jects with Álvaro Siza Vieira and Eduardo Souto de Moura. We then began con­s­tructing the tech­nical building in 2012, and right in the middle of the works we received the news that this would be as far as we could go, as all public con­s­truction pro­jects in Por­tugal were being sus­pended until further notice due to the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Then ever­y­thing went quiet. Until last Sep­tember. We were com­pletely taken aback when we got the call saying that the project was going ahead again. We really hadn’t expected that. And we won­dered what it would be like to resume work on a 15-year-old project. But it was an immense pleasure – and not just because the entire ori­ginal planning team came back tog­ether … We were all 12 years older!

We can now start con­verting two of the four halls, which will accom­modate the tram operator’s acti­vities, including all the repair and main­tenance work­shops and the necessary office and training spaces. A decision on what will happen to the plans for the museum in the neigh­bouring halls is due this October.

We’ll keep our fingers crossed! While pre­paring for this interview, we noticed once again that many of your pro­jects are in the Uckermark.

That’s right. The Uckermark has shaped my practice almost from the outset, and I’m sure many people first became aware of my work through the pro­jects we com­pleted there. They are the roots of the practice.

Werkhaus, Uckermark

Pavillons, Uckermark

Das Schwarze Haus, Uckermark

Die Rote Scheune, Uckermark

Larger public pro­jects, such as our school buil­dings in rural areas, like Oster­hof­schule, grew out of the expertise we gained through the buil­dings in the Uckermark. They are the reason we were invited to take part in com­pe­ti­tions for pro­jects of this kind in the first place. So, in that sense, ever­y­thing really does go back to the Uckermark.

Alongside the incre­asingly diverse building com­mis­sions and the some­times very dif­ferent scales at which you now work, how do you see the deve­lo­pment of your archi­tec­tural lan­guage? Looking through your pro­jects, we had the impression that your designs have become more sculp­tural.

I’m pleased to hear that. At the same time, I’m already thinking about what comes next. The archi­tecture we develop is always closely related to its spe­cific context: the place where the project is located, the sur­rounding typo­logies we can learn from, add to and develop further, but also the eco­nomic con­di­tions. In that respect, I think our archi­tecture is likely to become more rational in the near future.

At the moment, there is vir­tually no alter­native to serial con­s­truction when it comes to keeping within budget. I see a great oppor­tunity in working with serial con­s­truction pro­viders to find an archi­tec­tural form that is both inte­resting and liveable. The sculp­tural quality may then lie more in the arti­cu­lation of the building. Par­ti­cular importance is attached to the special uses at ground level, which shape our streets and support the upper storeys pro­duced in serial con­s­truction.

Do you develop an indi­vidual serial con­s­truction concept for this, or do you tend to analyse the solu­tions curr­ently offered by dif­ferent pro­viders?

For a com­pe­tition in Bremen that involved modular con­s­truction, we actually looked closely at a number of serial con­s­truction pro­viders and found that the matrix is rela­tively rigid and repe­titive. They all work from the same basis. That gave us the freedom to con­sider what is essential and where there is scope for design.

Sounds exciting.

Yes, it is. And it’s fun to establish new rela­ti­onships within a rule-based matrix. If you also con­sider the overall demand for housing con­s­truction and what we actually need to achieve over the next few years, this could be an excellent way of deli­vering attractive and affordable housing.

Does the subject play a role in your tea­ching?

I teach at the Kunst­aka­demie Düs­seldorf, where we offer a master’s pro­gramme only. My stu­dents have already acquired their archi­tec­tural training during their bachelor’s degrees at other uni­ver­sities. They arrive with quite dif­ferent skill sets, which need to be aligned and deve­loped during the first year.

As Pro­fessor of Bau­kunst, or the Art of Archi­tecture, I mainly work with existing buil­dings and explore their potential for further deve­lo­pment and/or adaptive reuse. The stu­dents in my class then develop and submit their own ideas for a project, including a schedule, which is to be imple­mented over the course of a semester or a year. At most, one or two stu­dents will choose to focus on serial con­s­truction. Much to my delight, their inte­rests often extend further into building within existing con­texts. This includes broader issues such as neigh­bourhood infra­structure and urban design.

We don’t have an explicit focus on building con­s­truction. Instead, it is much more about responding to the indi­vidual qua­lities of the stu­dents, helping to shape their voca­bulary and sup­porting them in this quest.

What con­nection do you see between art and the actual archi­tecture of your pro­jects?

An inspi­ra­tional one. In terms of formal aspects, but also mate­riality, pro­portion, light and the emo­tions that spaces can evoke.

The great thing about our pro­jects is that so far we have never had clients who simply wanted the shell of a building. Instead, the brief has always been holistic, including the built-in ele­ments that define the spaces.

In con­ver­sa­tions, I often find that all of us – myself included – operate within the bounds of our own expe­rience and become caught up in the con­ven­tions that result from it, that our ability to imagine dif­ferent typo­logies or set­tings is limited. A young family expecting to have two children, for example, might want a detached house. That trans­lates into a certain number of rooms arranged according to func­tional sequences. Often, you have your own childhood home in mind, because those are the para­meters defined by your expe­rience. In the best-case sce­nario, of course, you can reach a point where you realise: “Perhaps it could actually be some­thing com­pletely dif­ferent!”

Years ago, at some point during the design process, a young couple we were working for wrote me a genuinely moving and respectful letter that ended with the short sen­tence: “We are appalled.” We spoke on the phone after­wards, and they asked me to recommend a book that would help them under­stand more about the design process so that they didn’t feel quite so unsettled and left behind.

Instead of a spe­cialist book – I wouldn’t have known which one to suggest – I recom­mended Gogol’s The Nose. It deals with pre­cisely this framework of social con­ven­tions: the blind faith we place in inhe­rited and learned con­di­tions that reflect our own estab­lished position in society. Not long after­wards, they called again. They said they were now so excited that they could hardly sleep and wanted the house exactly as we had designed it. They loved it.

It ended up being one of the fastest pro­jects we’ve ever com­pleted. It was a genuinely won­derful expe­rience for everyone involved.

How did you come to teach at the Kunst­aka­demie Düs­seldorf?

I first came to the academy after being invited to give a lecture. It was about rules of use: In what dif­ferent ways can spaces be used, in both public and private buil­dings? After­wards, the Bau­kunst team approached me and said that they had a vacancy and that this was actually why they had invited me. After that, the official appointment pro­cedure began.

What I really like there is that the profile of the stu­dents stu­dying Bau­kunst is uncom­pro­mi­singly huma­nistic. Alongside the design class, the depart­ments devoted to art-related disci­plines provide the foun­dation – with art phi­lo­so­phical reflec­tions on archi­tecture, con­tem­plation of the sociology of the arts and aes­thetic theory, as well as archi­tec­tural theory and history. Ques­tions and themes are coor­di­nated and explored in greater depth across depart­ments each semester. There is also dis­course within art history and art studies.

The focus of the pro­gramme is on deve­loping artistic, creative, theo­re­tical and prac­tical skills. Work in the Bau­kunst class is com­ple­mented by the wide range of acti­vities on offer in the 13 work­shops, which are run by artists. They support the stu­dents in rea­lising their intended work, bringing both an aes­thetic under­standing and the necessary tech­nical expertise.

The pro­ximity to the art classes and the reciprocal practice of art stu­dents joining Bau­kunst and vice versa fre­quently opening up a new, some­times obsessive per­spective to ques­tions of aes­thetics and their rela­ti­onship to present and future issues of archi­tecture.

To com­plement the semester pro­jects, we invite experts to join us for dis­cursive exchange. We discuss archi­tec­tural sociology, struc­tural design, craft­smanship, engi­neering, con­s­truction expe­rience and much more. We are looking for ques­tions and approaches to the complex archi­tec­tural tasks that are proving relevant to our society.

Let’s return to your pro­jects. One that caught our attention is Cluster Ulm. Was it ever built?

We deve­loped the design as tem­porary offices for an indus­trialist from Leipzig. He owns several pro­perties, both in rural areas and in ports. The idea was to develop Flie­gende Bauten – tem­porary struc­tures – so that the engi­neers working on his pro­jects could be based directly on site.

Flie­gende Bauten have the advantage that they do not require con­ven­tional planning per­mission. They are not entirely free from formal requi­re­ments, but the bureau­cratic effort involved in obtaining approval for their erection is con­siderably lower. Unfort­u­nately, the project was never rea­lised because employees had reser­va­tions about the fre­quent relo­ca­tions that would have been necessary. So, the dream of fle­xi­bility didn’t come true.

While we’re taking about unusual archi­tec­tural voca­bulary: The dis­trict school in Kirch­werder is also very distinctive. That was quite an unusual solution for many of those involved, wasn’t it?

Yes. And it was a long process, too. We were invited to enter the com­pe­tition in 2017 as one of the younger prac­tices with expe­rience of building in rural areas. We really went all out. The basic idea was the long­house typical of the region. In fact, we ori­gi­nally felt that it should consist of just one single, 200-metre-long volume.

We sub­se­quently divided the building into two in response to jus­tified con­cerns about exces­sively long routes. This gave the Kirch­werder project a kind of cour­tyard situation, with the two gable ends standing close tog­ether towards the road and the flanks of the buil­dings opening out in a V‑shape towards the land­scape. The school play­ground is nestled between them.

I think the building aut­ho­rities were also aware that the archi­tec­tural figure would not be quite as straight­forward to realise as a simpler volume that could perhaps have been pre­fa­bri­cated. But they were fully com­mitted to pur­suing this approach with us. In Schulbau Hamburg, our client, we also had a fan­tastic partner. The local com­munity was very com­mitted too, for example when it came to ensuring that the planned brick façade was not replaced by a sheet metal envelope for cost reasons.

It feels as though you’ve already built just about every typology there is. Is there any­thing you’d still par­ti­cu­larly like to do, some­thing you’re waiting for?

I’d love to build more schools and kin­der­gartens. I just find the idea that so many gene­ra­tions will be able to expe­rience and par­ti­cipate in these buil­dings won­derful. A fire station would be inte­resting too. There is always some­thing par­ti­cu­larly appe­aling about con­ceiving special-purpose buil­dings and giving them an archi­tec­tural form. But good urban housing is cer­tainly the most pressing issue of our time. And that’s what I’m con­cen­t­rating on now.

Another of your pro­jects, Mel­lenau, has an unusual floor plan. How did the tri­an­gular form come about?

Ori­gi­nally, there were two tri­angles. The client wanted a place that could serve both as a theatre rehearsal space and as a retreat. So, my first idea was a long wall with two tri­an­gular houses attached to it. And to return to your earlier question: the refe­rence and inspi­ration was Blinky Palermo and his tri­angles. The black next to the reflective.

You would have entered through the middle of the win­dowless wall and, on the other side, found yourself imme­diately back outside. That would, of course, have been exciting.

As the project deve­loped, however, the tri­angles slid over one another in order to sim­plify what had become a large-scale scheme. Instead of using several separate volumes, we worked with movable fur­niture to create space for the dif­ferent func­tions as required.

The house with the lost twin, so to speak.

Exactly.

And is the cir­cular con­crete structure an outdoor stage, or does it have a tech­nical function?

It has a dual function in that, first and foremost, it is a terrace. Beneath it, we installed a water cistern. The large tray collects the water from the spout and channels it into the cistern.

In den Söllen, your own holiday home in the Uckermark, is curr­ently for sale?

That’s right. I love the house very much, but I’ve now been able to buy a house with a garden in Berlin and simply can’t manage to look after ever­y­thing any more.

It’s a shame, because it was only through Blan­kensee that I dis­co­vered a real love of gar­dening. Apart from my student days in England, when I drove around the country in my little Lada and deve­loped a fasci­nation with its fan­tastic gar­dening culture – it was simply fan­tastic to see how much time and energy private indi­vi­duals devote to their gardens and land­scapes.

When we started in Blan­kensee, the very dry, loamy soil was a major challenge, which we were only able to overcome thanks to the expertise of Rainer Els­termann.

And every time I go out there, I dis­appear into the garden, and no one sees me again. But in the long run, it’s simply becoming too much, unfort­u­nately.

Do you still visit your other pro­jects in the Uckermark regu­larly, or do you at least keep in touch with the clients?

Yes, abso­lutely! And new pro­jects are also taking shape: a larger town­house with a garden in Templin for a client we’ve worked with before. It will accom­modate around 20 people and is due to be available for rent around Easter 2027.

We’ve already heard a little about that and are very much looking forward to finding out more. Thank you very much for talking to us, and every success with your work in the Uckermark and beyond!

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Thomas Kröger founded his office in Berlin in 2001 after working with Norman Foster in London and Max Dudler in Berlin.

Since then, he and his team have been working with clients both in Germany and abroad. Their pro­jects include private resi­dences, art gal­leries, museums, as well as office, resi­dential, and school buil­dings. He is a member of the BDA.

From 2011 to 2013, Thomas Kröger taught as a visiting pro­fessor in the Department of Archi­tecture at Nor­the­astern Uni­versity in Boston as part of the Berlin study program. He sub­se­quently held a visiting pro­fes­sorship at the Stuttgart Uni­versity of Applied Sci­ences. Since 2019, he has been a pro­fessor of archi­tecture at the Düs­seldorf Art Academy.

Text: The interview was con­ducted by Jan Hamer and Ulrich Stefan Knoll.

Photos: Thomas Kröger © Thomas Heimann (Cover photo), Museu do Carro Eléc­trico © Thomas Kröger Archi­tekten, Werkhaus Uckermark © Thomas Heimann © Thomas Kröger Archi­tekten, Pavillons Uckermark © Thomas Heimann © Thomas Kröger Archi­tekten, Das Schwarze Haus © Thomas Kröger © Ina Steiner © Thomas Kröger Archi­tekten, Rote Scheune © Thomas Heimann © Thomas Kröger Archi­tekten, Oster­hof­schule (Blackwood Forest) © Thomas Heimann, Am Deich © Jan Steen­block, Rickmers Reis­mühle (Bremen) © Thomas Kröger Archi­tekten, Kunst­aka­demie Düs­seldorf: A circus. Pavillon from Alex­ander Horbach, Sascha Lehn­hardt © Kai Werner Schmidt, Student workshop at the Del­brück sawmill © David Keuer, Annual final-year pre­sen­ta­tions – a tour of the Düs­seldorf Art Academy © Kim, Cluster Ulm © Thomas Kröger Archi­tekten, Stadt­teil­schule Kirch­werder © Thomas Heimann, Mel­lenau © Thomas Heimann © Thomas Kröger Archi­tekten, In den Söllen © Thomas Kröger © Thomas Heimann