Anna Heringer (Rosenheim, Germany, 1977), a visionary and multi-award-winning architect with work on three continents, bases her work on the exploration and use of architecture as a means to support local economies and promote ecological balance.
Committed and sustainable, Anna's work offers an alternative to the serious crises that threaten to make the planet uninhabitable and shows us how architecture can be part of the solution.
Committed and sustainable, Anna's work offers an alternative to the serious crises that threaten to make the planet uninhabitable and shows us how architecture can be part of the solution.
"Sustainability is synonymous with beauty, and what defines the aesthetic and sustainable value of a building is that it is in harmony with its design, structure, technique, and use of materials, as well as with its location, to the environment, to the user, and the socio-cultural context."
Anna Heringer
METI School, Rudrapur (Bangladesh), 2006. ICO Museum presents "Anna Heringer. Essential Beauty". Photograph by Peter Bauerdick.
Curated by Luis Fernández-Galiano, this exhibition presents the sustainable architecture of Anna Heringer, conceived to offer a better future.
Her work focuses on the use of local materials and techniques to create buildings that are characteristic of the place where they are located. These concepts are reflected in the exhibition; in addition, the presentation of the projects is supported by textiles made by Bangladeshi women who reproduce the floor plans and elevations of their buildings.
Anna Heringer believes that "architecture is a tool to improve lives" and in all her projects she applies one of the most important lessons learned in Rudrapur, the rural Bangladeshi village where she built her first project - The METI Rural School, Aga Khan Award 2007 - and where she continues to work and collaborate in initiatives for local progress.
"The most successful development strategy is to rely on existing, readily available resources and make the most of them, rather than relying on external systems."
Anna Heringer
Relaxing spaces, Omicron Electronics, Klaus (Austria), 2015. ICO Museum presents "Anna Heringer. Essential Beauty". Photograph by Stefano Mori.
For the German architect, sustainability, which this strategy places at the forefront, is synonymous with beauty, and what defines the aesthetic and sustainable value of a building is that it is in harmony with its design, structure, technique, and use of materials, as well as with its location, the environment, the user and the sociocultural context.
This leads it to involve local communities in the construction of all its projects, not only as a way of ensuring that they meet the needs for which they were designed but also as a means of providing training in traditional construction techniques that will allow for the future personal and professional development of its members. Without forgetting that this type of involvement develops in the community a sense of belonging that guarantees adequate and lasting conservation of the buildings.
This way of working is embodied in her maxim "Form follows love" which, in contrast to Louis Sullivan's famous "Form follows function", exemplifies the revolutionary nature of her conception of architecture.
The essential beauty of Anna Heringer's work is piercing, because it does not soothe but unsettles, wounding consciences and stirring up the placid landscape of conformity.
"For me, sustainability is synonymous with beauty, and beauty is the formal expression of love. When we act not out of fear, but out of love for a person, a community, and the planet, sustainability comes naturally. Form does not follow function: form follows love."
Anna Heringer
Anandaloy Building, Rudrapur (Bangladesh), 2018-2020. ICO Museum presents "Anna Heringer. Essential Beauty". Photograph by Kurt Hörbst.
The exhibition is completed with texts, photographs, drawings, and models that trace a journey through the main projects realized by Anna Heringer since 2006.
The main room contains the projects in Bangladesh, and the dazzling beauty of the textile realizations, hidden under the humble veneer of every day, recalls The Elegance of the Hedgehog novel by Muriel Barbery, which describes the refined and fascinating inner life of modest people.
The lower floor covers works in China, Morocco, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Germany, Austria, and Spain, a journey through three continents guided by the tenacity of his convictions, and where it is inevitable to evoke Archilochus' hedgehog rescued by Isaiah Berlin, who knows one thing very well as opposed to the fox who is distracted by knowing too many.
The upper floor displays images and videos related to her work and the manifesto promoted in Laufen, by the architect and her colleagues, where the tension between the idealism of the purposes and the reality of professional life makes one think of Schopenhauer's allegory about the hedgehogs that to withstand the cold they must get close, but not so close that it leads them to hurt themselves with their quills.
Solidarity store
The exhibition ends with a store where you can buy the various products woven by women from Rudrapur thanks to the support offered by Dipdii Textiles, a collective initiative of Anna Heringer, Veronika Lena Lang, and DIPSHIKHA, a society for non-formal education, training, and research for the development of villages in Bangladesh.
