“The ideal house doesn’t exist” – A conversation with Professor Matthias Loebermann

Professor Matthias Loebermann, Dipl.-Ing., is a freelance architect and was Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Building Climatology at Biberach University of Applied Sciences. Newsletter author Antje Sonnleitner interviewed him about the social and artistic-planning aspects of contemporary architecture.

 Professor Loebermann, you are among Germany's most innovative architects and have received numerous awards for your inventive building methods. In your opinion, what will the architecture of the future look like?

Future architecture must, more than ever, take care of people's needs – without denying its qualitative demands.

Do you think the "smart home" will become the standard?

 Here, it would be necessary to define what constitutes a smart home. In my view, it should serve people and be built simply and sustainably. Purely technical gimmicks, such as knowing whether the refrigerator is empty, are superfluous and useless. They diminish people's sense of personal responsibility.

“The ideal house doesn’t exist,” you say, because our needs change. With your students at Biberach University of Applied Sciences, you created a space that meets all the needs of human living within a three-by-three-meter footprint. What did you want to demonstrate with this?

The question was how little space one can live with and what that means in everyday life. We actually made the spaces available for residential use at a state garden show in Neu-Ulm. The result was that all residents were fundamentally willing to forgo individual space if it meant more room for community and communication. An interesting, if not entirely surprising, result of this live test.

They criticize the irresponsible and profit-driven handling of the valuable resource of land in many places and advocate for sustainable land development. What would be necessary to build the 800,000 apartments currently lacking in Germany efficiently, sustainably, and with a focus on the common good?

I believe that the problem can only be addressed through a variety of measures, such as sustainable densification, new forms of housing, and the repurposing of existing brownfield sites. All stakeholders – owners, users, planners, and legislators – must work together effectively on a case-by-case basis so that the problem gradually diminishes.

 "Almost everything is regulated, standardized, or prescribed" – In a lecture, you criticized the fact that the impenetrable flood of ever-new regulations unnecessarily complicates and significantly increases the cost of today's planning and construction processes. How can this regulatory frenzy be stopped?

As mentioned above, this will only succeed if discretion and appropriateness are the target parameters of the actors involved in the event.

They explained that conflicting regulations (e.g., accessibility versus roofing DIN standards) lead to poor compromises and liability consequences for planners, especially with ever-shorter construction times. In your opinion, how should this conflict be resolved, and what should the legislature do?

Unfortunately, this question isn't so easy to answer, as it involves fundamental conflicts and each party insists on its own requirements, which are understandable when considered individually. The solution, again, can only lie in a balanced assessment to which all parties agree.