2G #31: Riegler Riewe

Associates since 1987, the Austrian architects Florian Riegler and Roger Riewe, with their professional practice in Graz and Cologne, tackle their projects in a subtle and practical way, renouncing formal authorship as the motor of the design process. Their buildings respond to the environment and to the cultural baggage of society without wishing to offer the spectator a stunning form with pre-existing symbolic meanings. Quite the opposite, in fact: Riegler Riewe's buildings reveal themselves to be places in which the user has a highly active role in the definition and perception of the spaces. This number of the magazine 2G demonstrates how their planning strategies enable them to readily tackle buildings of an ever-increasing size and complexity, from transport infrastructures such as the rail stations in Innsbruck and Vienna or the airports in Graz and Hamburg, taking in educational buildings like the Computer and Electronics Institutes of the University of Graz, complex residential projects and the football stadium in Cologne.