Presentation of Heike Hanada

Heike Hanada is born 1964 and lives in Weimar, Germany.

She has been working as a free artist and as a teacher of architecture since 1999 at Weimar's Bauhaus University. She has been waiting for the right moment to take the step of becoming a practising architect. She has also been living and working in Japan during a couple of years.

She first came in contact with the architecture of Gunnar Asplund in the 1980'ies.

"I found it difficult to place a large building right next to Asplund's library. To me the inner courtyard and the low-rise entrance section between the high buildings are a way of marking a distance, creating a rhythm and a tranquillity in the townscape."

"The plot is of a kind which will be common in future, with less and less land going spare. A number of decisions will have to be made concerning what is to be demolished and how one can or should adapt oneself when building. It is a tricky balancing act in which conservative conclusions come easily. When a new building stands next to a new one, the different periods are made articulate, the new enriches the old and vice versa, resulting in a powerful wholeness."

Heike Hanada has designed a building which opens and closes itself. The building has a row of interlinked rooms, both vertically and horizontally. The room sequences, the relation between open and closed, continue far beyond the shell of the building. At the same time Heike Hanada has been intent on keeping everything functionally clear and simple without dead ends and backwaters.