Stefan Behnisch
Spring 2015
Stefan Behnisch was Visiting Professor at our faculty in Spring 2015. Led by Stefan Behnisch, Behnisch Architekten has grown into a successful international agency with branches in Stuttgart, Los Angeles, Boston and Munich. As a sustainable design innovator, Behnisch has won several prizes including the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture.
Stefan Behnisch:
"Whenever there was a new aspect of architecture in the past, it made itself very important in the beginning, think about the Eiffel tower. Engineering was just invented in architecture, and it made itself very visual. Nowadays, engineering is so far developed, it is not the main aspect anymore. So other aspects can express themselves. The same happens right now with the aspect of sustainability. Once we master the subject, it will be one of the disciplines like all the others."
“Architects have to understand enough to see opportunities, challenges and possibilities. If you don’t understand structure, you’ll never be as good as an engineer. But if you don’t understand the principle of structure, they can tell you whatever they want. A lot of people in our profession, consultants, engineers, they have a tendency to do what they have done in the past twenty years, so innovation is not possible anymore if we don’t control the process. I advise students to be interested, to be curious in all these fields, to be able to understand the discussion also from the other side of the table.”
Visiting Professor Stefan Behnisch
Sustainable design
He was a ‘visiting critic’ in various modules and gave inspirational lectures in which he shared his expertise on sustainable design with the students.
“Having worked with Stefan Behnisch on several competitions and projects but also having seen his oeuvre I experience him as the archetype of an integral thinking architect. It is all about the function, the form, the performance of a building – with the human being put in the centre! He always starts with the question of what the building is supposed to deliver and how this will function – in terms of technology as well as aesthetics – and keeps track of these aspects until the functional building is realized.“ Ulrich Knaack, Professor of Design and Construction, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft.
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IBN Wageningen (1998) - photographer: Martin Schodder
