Review of Staab Architekten; Kindred Objects by Florian Heilmeye, originally published on metropolismag.com
“Hardcore contextualism” is how Florian Heilmeyer, author of Staab Architekten; Kindred Objects(Hatje Cantz: 2016), characterizes the practice: their work “weaves itself into the surroundings so intimately that it is actually difficult to spot at times.” The newly published monograph details 15 of Staab’s 44 projects—from the Neues Museum in Nuremberg, completed in 1994, to an office building at Schinkelplatz, Berlin completed last year. The book itself is beautiful, expensive, chunky, and arranged with tasteful graphics and plenty of white space. So contextualised is much of their work that an initial flick-through is like a game of Where’s Waldo?: a Berlin office building nestles amid the capital’s cityscape; the extension to the Richard Wagner museum in Bayreuth hides stage right; the faux-thatched roofs of the Kunstmuseum Ahrenshoop blend into their rural surroundings…
