Young German Architects #2: Buero Wagner

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His father, grandfather, brother and uncle have all been civil engineers, which set the course for his own professional career. However, Fabian A. Wagner was more attracted to the creative side – and established his own bureau of architects in 2012.

No more than two years lay between the foundation of his office „Buero Wagner“ and the first project which attracted attention internationally. In 2014, the cocktail bar “Gamsei” was published on Dezeen, designboom and in the Wallpaper magazine. White ceramic bottles hang from the ceiling, suspended from a dark-coloured metal lattice, constituting the predominant design element of the bar. Otherwise, the interior is kept in light-coloured wood. The emphasis is on naturalness, which reflects the attitude of the barkeeper – for the Gamsei bar offers exclusively cocktails with natural ingredients supplied by local producers. Accordingly, the white ceramic bottles are filled with home-made liqueurs and essences.

White is a predominant colour in the projects of Buero Wagner – in the bar just as in the various apartment and loft designs or the remodelling of the historic washhouse of a Bavarian convent. Why white? Fabian A. Wagner thinks that good architecture should be “appropriate and timeless”. There is no doubt about his success in this matter, and at the same time he succeeds in creating his very own design vocabulary.

His latest project: the “Old Opera House” in Frankfurt, which offers more than 400 concerts each year to some 450,000 visitors. Here, Buero Wagner won a competition for remodelling one of the existing foyers into a meeting point and communication area for flexible use. With this concept, Buero Wagner won against, large, well-established competitors. Zaha Hadid Architects took second place in this competition.

Thus Buero Wagner, domiciled near the Ammersee lake about 30 km from Munich, is presenting yet another exciting project. In Frankfurt, for the first time, the predominant colour will not be white, but gold. We are eagerly awaiting the realisation.

Fabian A. Wagner
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