Junior Professor for Constructive Design and Experimentation Joins the Faculty

Tim Simon-Meyer studied at the Universität der Künste Berlin and the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa where he gained practical experience at the architectural firms of Pezo von Ellrichshausen in Concepción, Chile, and Max Dudler in Berlin, among others.

From 2015 to 2017, he worked as a scientific associate in the Department of Architectural Design and Conception under Prof. Uta Graff at the Technical University of Munich. He also worked under Prof. Matthias Ballestrem in the »Architektur und experimentelles Entwerfen« Department at the HafenCity University Hamburg. From 2022 to 2023, he was the director of the »Entwurfsstudio Studio SM/S« at the HafenCity University Hamburg together with Daniel Springer.
Together with Portuguese architect João Quintela, he founded the German-Portuguese architectural firm »Atelier JQTS«, which involved in practice, research and teaching.

What motivated you to come to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar?

The first thing that drew me here was the job advertisement, which appealed to me in that it aligned very closely with my interests and experience in practice, teaching and research. The experimental aspect in particular allows for unconventional teaching formats, which is also attractive to me.

The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is a well-known institution for design architecture training. In a small town like Weimar, this is something unique and seems to encourage students to identify strongly with the University. This fosters a very focussed learning and teaching environment, which enables in-depth exchanges between instructors and students. The University also places a strong emphasis on imparting design skills, which I find important. I’m pleased to be able to contribute my specialisations and interests to teaching in this respect.

What were your first few weeks in the Faculty and at the University like?

Very focussed and exciting. My first meetings with students were very inspiring and made my excited for the semester and the next few years at the University. You can really sense how driven the students are and how motivated they are by their studies.

I've also gotten to know some of my colleagues and have attended a number of meetings; this has provided me with some initial insights into the topics and focal points of teaching and research at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism. I’m delighted that we’ve already been able to have an initial exchange on possible collaborations within the University, which underscores the strong interest in cross-faculty formats.

And I'm lucky that I’m surrounded by a great team in the junior professorship, some of whom were here before me and who are also increasing their numbers.

What are the questions the Junior Professorship of Constructive Design and Experimentation is dealing with? What does it mean to be a junior professor?

We want to look at strategies for more sustainable building - and holding the architecture design to a high standard. We are interested in how a sustainable approach to design can result in a specific architectural expression that can be experienced both physically and through the senses. In addition to material cycles, the general themes also include reversible construction methods that take future deconstruction and/or possible additions into consideration. Or, for instance, the demand for a robust, multi-use architecture that enables individual adaptions without changing its fundamental character.

To achieve this, we use various methods and different scales. We also hope to test design approaches and constructions on a 1:1 scale. Examining materials and construction methods will be just as important as collaboration with local partners, experts from other disciplines and potential future users.

The junior professorship allows us to explore these topics in greater depth and to expand on them together with students. It allows theory, research and practice to be intertwined.

What are the research topics you hope to purse in Weimar? 

One topic that has occupied me for a long time is the connection between construction and architectural expression. »Tectonics« is a term sometimes used to describe this and which Kenneth Frampton so wonderfully described as the poetics of construction. With this in mind, my design approach takes material, construction and form into consideration together from the outset and places the material and how it fits together at the beginning of the design work. I want to continue this approach at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, but with the aim of exploring the potential for more sustainable design and construction. After all, a design approach that takes into consideration which materials are being used from the get go can adapt to resource shortages, for instance.

You have been working with your own firm in Hamburg and Lisbon for over ten years — how has this international perspective impacted your approach to designing? What has been your most exciting architecture project so far?

Collaborating with Joao Quintela began when we were both students and our work was characterized from the very beginning our strong motivation not only to design, but also to implement our designs- if necessary with our own hands. We carried out our first projects during the financial crisis in Portugal, which meant that we had to deal with an inevitable »economy of means« right from the start. We also had to make sure were still designing meaningful architecture with very limited possibilities. This debate is still a source of interest us today.

One exciting project was the NOVERCA school addition in the form of a small, free-standing building. The expansion was intended to help children with mental and/or physical disabilities with their social, intellectual and sensory development. The parents of the school children were in contact with a company that develops and implements modular systems for wooden houses. This inspired us to use this well-established system to develop our own architecture. We were most interested in the haptic and sensory qualities of the materials we used — whether it was a marble slab or, in our case, an OSB board — and in the design potential of the construction. We did our best to exploit the design potential within the limited framework conditions we were given.

What should students look forward to in your courses? 

I think that students can expect in-depth and diverse teaching that is always shifting between different methods and standards. It’s important that students establish their own perspectives on topics and locations. To encourage this, we support students’ individual ideas and approaches. The current crisis and associated demands on the construction industry have forced us to rethink architecture. It remains to be seen, however, which approaches prove to be viable and sustainable. In the spirit of research-based design, we also want to test things out and see where we end up in order to develop future projects.