Landes: Building Metaphors
Roland Burgard
Michael A. Landes turned away from classical modernity at an early stage to instead focus on a new architectural pluralism. To this end, he developed a vocabulary that allows him to meet the design requirements coupled with contextual, traditional, or functional demands. In order to find integral solutions to architectural and urban planning problems, he employs both his own syntax and grammar as well as a unique vocabulary.
Thinking and designing in metaphors is the basic premise of his work. He applies the created pictures at differ- ent scales – urban planning, project or detail-related or combines them into collages. The natural transition from the creative intellectual approach to the pragmatic design process can be witnessed not only in the transforma- tion of an industrial fallows or a street- car depot, but also in his extensive scope of residential projects in various urban planning situations, which is the focus of his current activities.
The architect Roland Burgard has worked for over two decades since 1977 for the city of Frankfurt in the public work service. The following 20 years he taught at the Uni- versity of Applied Arts in Vienna. Further- more, he is a renowned architecure critic and founder of the architecture magazine “Archigrad”.
Michael Alexander Landes studied ar- chitecture from 1970–1976 at the Technical University of Darmstadt. After working with different partners to realize projects all over Germany, he founded his firm Landes & Partner in Frankfurt in 1995.