Gustav Düsing

German Embassy Tel Aviv, Residence, Competition 1st Prize

Competition entry for the German Embassy in Tel Aviv, Residence. (1st Prize) Team: Ana Filipovic Mecke, in collaboration with wolff:architekten, EMMERIK Garden Design & Research, Architekten für Nachhaltiges Bauen (Building physics), Bollinger Grohmann (Structural Engineering)

Our winning design for the German Embassy in Tel Aviv is a transformation of an existing building and garden to meet the spatial and representational requirements of an embassy residence. A new, convertible lightweight structure wraps the existing building and creates a climatic buffer zone that allows for various public activities. The design follows the principle of “eco-minimalism,” in which the idea of reduction is understood as an expression of climate awareness and a resource-conserving design approach in architecture.

Demountable open space concept for the Technical University Braunschweig, with Max Hacke

Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering

Fotos: Iwan Baan, Lemmart, Leonhard Clemens

The new Study Pavilion on the campus of the Technical University of Braunschweig is an open space concept designed to accommodate various student activities. The concept follows the principle of a superstructure that allows the user to change and reconfigure the floor plan of the building to meet the ever-changing needs in a rapidly evolving campus context. The high degree of flexibility in the floor plan makes the pavilion ephemeral and therefore responsive, ensuring its enduring relevance as a new emerging campus typology.

Fellows Pavilion - American Academy in Berlin Architects: Barkow Leibinger, Frank Barkow, Regine Leibinger

Fellow’s Pavilion at the American Academy Berlin, 2014

Architects: Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Frank Barkow, Regine Leibinger
Team: Tobias Wenz (project architect), Gustav Düsing, Ulrich Fuchs, Annette Wagner
Photos © Stefan Müller © Simon Menges

Inspired by the history of the pavilion in the 20th century and from its own earlier prototypes, such as the “Loom Hyperbolic” installation for the Marrakech Biennale 2012, a light glass and steel construction was designed for the garden of the villa. The main element of the building, which offers space for seven study rooms and a small kitchen, is a double-curved roof made of steel beams that seems to float above the rooms. The shape of the roof follows a regular geometry that produces four hyperbolic paraboloids from two-dimensionally offset and twisted straight lines.

spatial transformation,

Berlin, 2019

Photos: Johannes Förster

Sited between the nature reserve of the Rummelsburger-Bucht and the still operating, industrial monument Klingenberg, the project examines the spatial potential of ultra-light moving elements in the context of open floor plans. In various applications, light, stretched fabrics and curtains were used to create space pockets in different scales, generating areas for multiple functions. Over two floors, the layout offers auditoriums, several intimate meeting rooms, two catering areas and a number of undefined areas for expansion. The space can easily be converted from domestic to corporate and from community to private. Custom furniture elements, including tables, benches, sofas, large storage units as well as kitchens for catering, support a variety of scenarios. The multi-purpose event space serves both the local creative scene and the nearby city center and is bridging the industrial past with the preserved landscape.

*ongoing project

Kinetik Installation @ Villa Massimo // Deutsche Akademie in Rom

The name ‘sunsight to sunclipse’ refers to the earth rotating around the sun, which means the sun does not rise, but rather becomes visible (sunsight) and darkens again to our sight in the evening (sunclipse). The atmosphere can ultimately be understood as a gigantic architectural shell, in which we live together with all other species. These terms were coined by Buckminster Fuller, who compares the earth to a spaceship in his book ‘Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth’.

Tent on Cuverville Island, 2017 Antarctic Biennale

Frozen Tent for the 2017 Antarctic Biennale,

Cuverville Island, Antarctica

“Tent on Cuverville Island, Antarctica” is a site-specific installation for the Antarctic Biennale 2017. For the concept of a nomadic journey through the Antarctic Peninsula, We designed a tent made of frozen fabric. Inspired by the heroic adventures of the early twentieth century, such as Ernest Shakelton’s Endourance Expedition, the tent is the most iconic architectural typology of Antarctica.

*competition entry, finalist

with Max Hacke, Violetta Burckhardt and Marcel Troeger

structural consultancy: Knippers Helbig

Our award winning proposal for the extension of the Maxxi Museum in Rome is essentially an industrial scale timber-frame structure on a rammed earth base covered by a large photovoltaic screen. The program ranges from an innovation hub to laboratories and art storages. The proposal challenges the traditional definition of inside and outside, by introducing a new type of space, “mid-doors” – a naturally air-conditioned communal space that is suitable for social events regardless of pandemics.

Loom Hyperbolic Architects: Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Frank Barkow, Regine Leibinger

4th Marrakech Biennale, 2012

Architects: Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Frank Barkow, Regine Leibinger
Project Leader: Gustav Düsing
Photos: Johannes Förster

The project references the flat, horizontal tents of the Berbers, in which one moves bent over and sits on the floor. The hyperbolic geometry creates a series of spaces that, through the translucency of the surfaces, combine with the simple beauty of the environment whose repetitive arrangement captures the adaptive patterns and ornaments that are omnipresent in the Arab world.

permanent Installation

Berlin, 2020

Team: Mariami Kurtishvili

The permanent installation on a roof between the industrial site Klingenberg and the nature reservoir Rummelsburger-Bucht serves as an elevated sundeck, allowing for unblocked views across the closed balustrade into the contrasting landscape. The galvanized steel-structure blends into the materials of modern roofsscapes with galvanized ventilators and lighting conductors. Integrated flowerpots with plants found on local wastelands puts one on the same level with the flora, like sitting in a dystopian park.

Notes on Fortnightism (2020), with Carson Chan

A scalable and transportable medical facility as a response to the 2020 corona pandemic, with Carson Chan

Visuals by Grau

Pathogens do not follow spatial or temporal boundaries, and neither should architecture’s response to disease outbreaks. ›Notes on Fortnightism‹ (2020) features the Responsive Care Center, easy set-up medical quarantine tents that pop-up around the world where needed. Easily stored and shipped, Responsive Care Centers are designed to mitigate disease spread, preventing epidemics from becoming pandemics that, as we know by now, can bring human activity to a grinding stop.

with Students of the University Roma Tre, 2021

For our studio at the Department of Architecture at the University of Roma Tre, we left the surface of the earth behind to create a new type of co-housing structure which is elevated from the ground as a new architectural model for a near future of material shortage and environmental consciousness. Each proposal became a cell in the larger structure, while we experimented with lightweight materials in the spirit of Frei Otto, Yona Friedmann and Buckminster Fuller.

Thicket Architects: Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Frank Barkow, Regine Leibinger

Ticket @ HOW SOON IS NOW
Judin Gallery, Berlin, 2014

Architects: Barkow Leibinger, Berlin Frank Barkow, Regine Leibinger
Project Architect: Gustav Düsing
Photos: ©Ina Reinecke/Barkow Leibinger

Regarding a possible future of increasing material efficiencies as a result of material shortages this spatial installation is a tessellated thicket. By reducing the material of each structural member to an absolute minimum, space is only defined by the increasing and decreasing density of material. „Thicket“ also begs a comparison between our artificially contrived one and those found in nature as in: to be lost in a thicket, a kind of labyrinth.

Una Tenda per due Giardini, German Embassy in Rome

*under construction, completion 2022

a demountable Pavillon for the German Academy in Rome Villa Massimo and the German Embassy in Rome, Villa Almone, engineering by schlaich bergermann partner

How much architecture do we really need in order to be sheltered? The pandemic has shown that interiors aren’t suitable for communal events. In fact, interiors are currently maybe even unhealthy for humans. What is the future scenario for social spaces? In order to react to the current environmental and health crisis, temporary light-weight structures can offer an alternative to closed up and air-conditioned interiors.

Soundinstallation, with Katharina Pelosi as part of Villa Massimo in Cittá, 2021
Foto by Leonhard Clemens

The name Opaion refers to the 19th century secret room hidden under the inconspicuous concrete cover in Villa Torlonia, Rome which was only discovered in 2004. The concise round shape with it’s dome including an opaion (dome eye), its niches, frescoes and wall paintings in the Etruscan style are the basis of a sound composition that was projected into the park via hidden loudspeakers.

Talus - Berlin Teufelsberg, IAD, TU Braunschweig

Research excerpts developed as an assistant professor at the Institute for Architectural Design, Prof. Volker Staab at the Technical University Braunschweig in 2018/19

In the substance of the Teufelsberg, Berlins highest Trümmerberg, everything from intact bricks to reinforced concrete can be found. Although found to be unusable and disposed of, all these fragments still bear signs of an intelligent coherence, differentiating them as architectural fragments against the naturally grown soil from which they originate.