Interview with Memux and Christine Pils

Thomas Mennel and Reinhard Muxel joined forces to establish the Memux studio in 1998. Many of the studio’s projects are realised in collaboration with other designers from various fields. A particularly exciting product emerged from the collaboration with the designer, Christine Pils, and the managing director, Werner Schedler, of Oberhauser & Schedler Bau. In an extraordinary approach towards concrete, they created a product that is both unique and suitable for everyday use at the same time, and which in a seeming contradiction between its materiality and variableness embodies a piece of textile architecture.

What is it that lends the concrete its poetic nature?
The poetics lie in the elevation and transformation of the actual contradictions. This textile object can be interpreted in terms of look, feel and sound. It meets the demands of pure functionality, but pushes them into the background by offering other values to be experienced.

What advantages and possibilities does concrete as a material offer over textiles?
The free formability of concrete and the way in which it bonds with other materials while it is still fluid opens up freedoms that counteract those characteristics that are usually ascribed to concrete – solidity, hardness, heaviness. Weight for example turns into a relative factor; depending on the application, it turns into an advantage over light textiles.

What is your design philosophy?

The challenge is in the process of finding ideas. Independent from the field or subject, the pivotal aim is to create designs of high artistic level. Function is at once both a starting point and a consequence. Elevating the materials, forms and spaces opens up new possibilities of experience and use. The interest focuses on intensifying the points of contact for the user and the consumer.

To what extent is your work influenced by related disciplines?

Memux realises projects that range from classical architecture and experimental design to the concept and monitoring of performances. This generates a natural interplay between different design ideas and approaches. Suitability for everyday use and aesthetisation are neither formally nor functionally defined parameters, but are part of a process that reaches beyond a mere disquisition on the design task. Breaking with traditional notions about individual disciplines and subjects is not an end in itself, but the outcome of in-depth examination.