About Time.
With Marie-Theres Deutsch

Yes, it had been turned into a pile of rubble in a 1944 bombing raid. Next door were four bars where the emer­gency exits all used the plot, so there were fire protec­tion issues, too. Because the site was only eight meters wide, no investor was inter­ested. I made virtue of a neces­sity and rerouted the emer­gency exits through the house. The bars have since closed down, but up to eight years ago you could still walk from our court­yard along our corridor out onto the street. That was entered as an encum­brance in the approved plans.

Yep! There are panic buttons that in an emer­gency give you access from our court­yard to the corridor. Quite normal. Not a problem. I like long corri­dors (laughs).

I had never previ­ously frequented the place. The Munic­ipal Plan­ning Dept. suggested to my husband and me that we should take a look around here. They were hunting for archi­tects who were prepared to design build­ings for an old setting. And to pre-empt the ques­tion, today I would approach the project exactly the same way. It’s only loud here on Friday and Saturday nights. We sleep at the back of the house and have well-insu­lated windows, so there’s no noise issue. A lot can be done with tech­nology to constrain noise pollu­tion.

What does catch the eye, however: It’s dirty outside and increas­ingly so. Nowa­days, like in the district round the central railway station, in the morning there are empty laughing gas canis­ters all over the place. Some­times I chat with the young people and get invited to try it out for myself. What I think is great is that everyone knows each other here. I moved here from West­hafen, my husband from Osthafen; each of us had a large apart­ment. We both lived anony­mously in apart­ment blocks. Living in Alt-Sach­sen­hausen is like living in a village, with people from all over the world. And it’s not much more than a stone’s throw from the Römer.

I have often told the story, but it’s worth retelling. Imagine the following situ­a­tion: Four daugh­ters fight it out for their father’s atten­tion. I built Lego houses and drew ground plans, and that guar­an­teed me my dad for myself some­times even for an hour. He was an archi­tect and thus I grad­u­ally became immersed in the subject. At the age of six, I knew: I’m going to be an archi­tect! Period.

It was clear to me from the outset that I would complete my first, tech­nical degree very quickly. At the acad­e­mies it was a precon­di­tion for being accepted. I found myself in a completely different world and stayed on in Frank­furt. There were wonderful people at the Städelschule, and initially the curriculum was very inter­dis­ci­pli­nary. Günter Bock and Peter Cook headed the archi­tec­ture class, Peter Kubelka “exper­i­mental film” and “cooking as art”, and Hermann Nitsch was guest professor. The entire situ­a­tion simply capti­vated me.

In the 1970s, at the Frank­furt Univer­sity of Applied Sciences you primarily learned the tech­nical know-how, from which I was of course able to derive bene­fits. For a young person, however, it some­what blurred your judge­ment as a lot centered around the ques­tion of “How can I use this specific mate­rial?” In archi­tec­ture, though, the purpose is to find the roots of the place, to tease out what the history is and to “play” with that knowl­edge. What is immensely impor­tant is not just to copy the styl­istic means of the past but to estab­lish what is special about the place and to trans­form that into today’s world. So don’t ask me about Frank­furt’s New Old Town (laughs). That’s an example where you can see how great the differ­ence can be between urban plan­ning and archi­tec­tural quality. I feel the modi­fied histor­ical urban foot­print is persua­sive, and the high visitor figures demon­strate that the place is an attrac­tion. But the indi­vidual build­ings are bad copies of their prede­ces­sors, and only two of the build­ings have in my opinion achieved the requi­site trans­for­ma­tion.

At the art academy, I learned from teachers such as Günter Bock and Peter Cook to construe archi­tec­ture as a response in the here and now. We’re inten­sively trained to do that. As a young archi­tect, I bene­fited from both curricula: at the Städelschule I was able to learn how to escape the confines of the tech­nical approach and to tackle the design process in a freer mode.

Kasper König’s atti­tude played a key role. He thought outside the main­stream box. We had heard from Thomas Bayrle that Kasper was inter­ested in signing on in Frank­furt. But under the condi­tion that he could exhibit at a place of his choice. So where could that be? Back then, the three of us drove over the bridge crossing the Main, where today’s Liter­aturhaus is located – Manfred Stumpf, Thomas Bayrle, and I. An artist was just shooting a film scene there. A huge halogen spot­light was shining on the then ruins, and one of us exclaimed: “That’s it!” That moment enabled us to expe­ri­ence the place in a new way.

Thomas told Kasper about our idea – and that it was tough. The ruins were a monu­ment to the soldiers killed in World War II and stood abut­ting the inner-city ring road featuring park­land rather than the razed city ramparts. To this day, the law states that no building may be erected on that ground. Kasper imme­di­ately cham­pi­oned the idea. A marvelous place, really close to down­town and yet off-center. Home­less people frequently used the area. Kasper and Thomas met in Frank­furt for a meal, and by pure chance I wandered into the same restau­rant that day. Thomas spotted me and called out, “There she is! Here, Kasper, your archi­tect!” That was how we teamed up. Those two moments were deci­sive. The idea thus evolved that was in no way related to the later name of the place: Portikus. The line of river­side museums had just been completed, places with a high entrance threshold. Kasper wanted exactly the oppo­site: an uncom­pli­cated, vibrant place that would exclude the estab­lish­ment’s self-conceit.

A few years later, adopting precisely that mindset, I devel­oped many small places along the river­side down­town. To this day, the idea is successful, as the Main river­side is highly popular with all its small bars. It’s not just locals who love those easily acces­sible relaxed spaces directly on the water­side.

My plans for the Portikus were contro­ver­sial even among those at the Städelschule. My former teachers accused me of showing a lack of respect. “…She simply slaps the art box down directly next to the ruined wall …,” as some put it. “…But it’s a monu­ment to the soldiers who were killed!”, they said. I was slammed for being “cheeky”. The Munic­ipal Dept. of Building insisted that “she’s much too young and inex­pe­ri­enced, it can’t work out. We’ll do it ourselves!” I got really mad. What followed was a really intense working weekend with colleagues and fellow students in the knowl­edge that “we’ve got a weekend only and will plan the design on a scale of 1:50 including all the details ….” No sooner said than done. Early Monday saw me standing with the filled tube of plans at the entrance to the Munic­ipal Building Dept. waiting to inter­cept the guys. I was conde­scend­ingly taken along to the meeting. There I presented our care­fully planned proposal. I was fortu­nate enough to combine commit­ment with audacity, and my tech­nical knowl­edge from my days at the Univer­sity of Applied Sciences once again proved a strength.

Hilmar Hoff­mann as City Deputy Mayor in charge of Culture and Hans-Erhard Haverkampf as City Building Exec­u­tive supported the project. It was clear that the City of Frank­furt really wanted to attract Kasper König, and the construc­tion manager at the munic­ipal FAG corpo­ra­tion, which handled site manage­ment, liked me. I acted very mascu­line and of course smoked the cigars I was offered. It was quite a struggle: How will I get due recog­ni­tion as a young female archi­tect? Will I be able to defend my corner? It really was like that. But it worked out.

Yes, I talked about how diffi­cult it was back then. My daughter was born while I was still studying at the Städelschule. My teacher Peter Cook said: “There are no chil­dren allowed at our academy!” I wasn’t impressed. My father died young, and I thus grew up in a house with five other women in the arch-Catholic, bigoted conser­v­a­tive world of Trier. Back then, we soon learned what we as young women had to do: combine a little brash­ness with swift­ness and provoca­tive­ness – in order not to get crushed by things.

Well, back in the 1980s many women with whom I was acquainted said, “I’ll manage alone!” Who needs a husband who simply wants to have his say all the time?

We mothers helped each other out, always alter­nating. The home and the office were often only sepa­rated by a door. On average, there were ten staff members in the office, and one of them always cooked for the team in the apart­ment. Or played with my daughter. After a few years, that frequently became too much for me. So I kept the home and the office far more sepa­rate, with the result that my child was often alone at home for too long.

Defi­nitely! We were invited to take part in a compe­ti­tion to design a mobile opera pavilion for 70 musi­cians in front of Alte Oper. We won the compe­ti­tion in the second round and were commis­sioned to handle the imple­men­ta­tion plan­ning together with the engi­neering office Bollinger+Grohmann – it was a bril­liant design. ARCH+ maga­zine published the project, and there was a great response. One week before construc­tion was sched­uled to begin, the project was suddenly termi­nated. I received a call from a secre­tary in the Munic­ipal Building Dept. who informed us we should down all tools with imme­diate effect. That was rough. We’d worked on it inten­sively for two whole years and fell into a deep, dark hole. To this day, I don’t know the reason why the project was discon­tinued.

The idea for a water-taxi line also did not get real­ized. To coin­cide with the FIFA World Cup 2006, the plan was for six water taxis with designs corre­sponding to the skyline to ply their trade between West­hafen and Osthafen. Friedrich von Metzler, who sadly died a few days ago, really helped me back then to find spon­sors for the taxis among river­side resi­dents. Each sponsor would have been respon­sible for one water taxi and would have had to finance its oper­a­tions for the first three years. The Nauheimer family was brought on board as oper­ator of the taxi line, and the FPS law office supported us, drawing up the contracts on a pro bono basis.

The very well adver­tised multi­media SkyArena light show during the World Cup succes­sively promoted the spon­sors who had already signed up with immense promises. I had myself financed the Main­lust water taxi, and more than two years of presen­ta­tions given for free along with meet­ings and plan­ning adjust­ments took me to the brink of finan­cial disaster. Petra Roth, at the time Lord Mayor of Frank­furt, promised to support us with every­thing other than financing. After being informed of that, I announced the end of the project in the Frank­furter Allge­meine. In conver­sa­tion, people to this day still ask me about the project. The idea remains as good as ever, even if a different finan­cial concept needs to be devel­oped.

It is my convic­tion today that Frank­furt is a city of busi­ness and banks. We had a brief culture bubble with Kasper König, when galleries received grants to attract the gallery and art world into the city. It was a brief heyday lasting perhaps 15 years. Patrons such as Sylvia and Friedrich von Metzler really need mentioning in this context as they supported the uncon­ven­tional ideas, too. You need outstanding indi­vid­uals to drive cultural ideas if you are to ensure that exciting projects such as, right now, the Frank­furt Proto­type (editors’ note: which went on display in October 2024 for three months at the Senck­en­berg Museum) do not disap­pear back into the ether after only a few months. Back then, as regards the Portikus, people kept on saying to me: “That tin can isn’t archi­tec­ture!” The city exec­u­tive in charge of the Munic­ipal Plan­ning Dept. at the time simply ignored me because I was a young woman. The art box was too auda­cious for Frank­furt’s high society back then.

That has to do with Kasper himself. The myth continues to grow. The glorious exhi­bi­tions with avant-garde artists hardly anyone had heard of. And the archi­tec­ture played a part, too. The building was the antithesis to the river­side museums, as Dieter Bartetzko wrote back in 1987 shortly after it opened. To this day, it remains incon­ceiv­able that artists can perfo­rate, convert, extend, or make inci­sions in a museum building. We performed this service for art in the form of the Portikus. I was able to assist a series of artists, in part making massive inter­ven­tions in my own building.

There is a project close to my heart and a project to make money. As an archi­tect, you want to pursue both approaches if at all possible. On behalf of an investor, I am currently plan­ning a larger housing project out in Frank­furt’s chic suburbs. In Alt-Sach­sen­hausen, I have been involved in a project for several years now that was delayed owing to the pandemic and the subse­quent phase of high interest rates. At present, I wait with bated breath to see how the munic­ipal author­i­ties respond. There were times when you took a lawyer with you when visiting a munic­ipal depart­ment; that did not improve the mood. Grad­u­ally, things appear to be changing, and of late I’ve enjoyed friendly and construc­tive meet­ings with the local author­i­ties.