Günter Günschel’s work reflects his research on the innovation of architectural forms. Throughout his career dedicated to experimentation, the designer’s predilection for pure and rigorous geometry blended with his boundless imagination and expressiveness. From the 1950 and up until his death in 2008, Günschel drew countless sketches infused with an emotional and expressionist charge, transposing many of them to the geometric volumes studied in his models and architectonic studies of wild landscapes. His compact and megalithic structures explore the universality of morphology while subjecting mass to experiments with incision, torsion or crystallization. Graduating in 1955, Günschel began his thinking about the innovation of materials and techniques and undertook studies on the construction of vaults, placing his research within the tradition of architect-engineers. Like D-G Emmerich, Robert Le Ricolais and Buckminster Fuller, Günschel pursued a dream of light and mobile architecture freed of reality’s constraints. His system of concrete shells, which he began to experiment with in the 1950, were patented in 1957. That same year with Frei Otto, he designed and built the structure of the City of Tomorrow pavilion for the Interbau international exhibition in Berlin. In 1958, Günschel joined Yona Friedman and the Groupe d’Etude d’Architecture Mobile (GEAM) where he conducted research on geodesic cupolas. In 1960, for the GEAM exhibition in Amsterdam, he designed a machine for manufacturing inflatable houses. Fascinated by mechanical processes for the production of art, Günschel was also a pioneer in the field of digital architecture. He was an early adopter of the computer in the 1980s as an experimental tool. His research on fractal geometry, a harbinger of computational architecture, places him close to the Deconstruction movement.
German architect, Günter Günschel studied architecture at the Giebichenstein School in Halle (1947-1949) then at the School of Architecture in Berlin. Author of numerous articles and books (notably Große Konstrukteure in 1966), in 1968 he was appointed to the chair of experimental architecture School of Fine Arts in Brunswick. He built several university housing complexes between the 1970s and 1990s. His architectonic and artistic work has been presented in several exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland and Poland.
Cornelia Escher
