Alexander Brenner Architects

This new book follows two successful previous volumes from 2011 and 2015.
It covers six villas and detached houses that were realized between 2015 and 2022, including the architect‘s own house in Stuttgart.
The buildings are documented in detail, generously illustrated with masterful photos by Zooey Braun, with numerous plans and sketches as well as other pictures, including those from the construction phase.
Informative texts and an essay by Alexander Brenner as well as an appreciation of his work by the architecture publicist Holger Reiners complete this volume.
Holger Reiners from the Reiners Foundation for Architecture and Science classifies the work of the architect in the history of architecture and current architectural events in his contribution „Committed to Beauty“.
He also writes about this third volume 2015-2022:
Alexander Brenner creates original, sculptural architecture - discreet and poetic,
often encrypted, but always with great creative power and an impact that never wears off.
The consistent understanding of his holistic architecture allows Alexander Brenner to design spheres of perception that go far beyond what is pragmatically necessary: into the animated world of forms of art.
Alexander Brenner sets completely new highlights in architecture by allowing it to merge with art.
The term art of building falls short of describing the magic of his works. His architecture is a stage for life that functions perfectly for its inhabitants throughout their day-to-day lives but also anticipates future developments. He develops all the furniture and fixtures for the projects with great sensitivity, integrating them into the rooms with highest precision and naturalness.
Alexander Brenner is a gifted versatile artist, for whom the beauty of his buildings is only fulfilled when he succeeds in making volumes and spaces express themselves as art. He creates contemporary architecture with a timelessness that outlasts every fashion and unites art and architecture in ever new themes of sculptures to live in.
Great architecture can only be created with an equally great passion for both designing and subsequently building. It is therefore worthwhile to understand his projects from the point of view of design passion – from the large-scale form, the gestural attitude, to the overabundance of fantastic details in the buildings themselves and in the gardens. Great architecture by a great architect.

This monograph, as a sequel to the first volume "Houses", which was published 2011, shows current "Villas and Houses" from the years 2010 by 2015.
The projects are presented in great detail based on of project texts, detailed plans and numerous, mostly double-sided photos. Each project is documented and described on 40-50 pages.
Insights into the construction, the design and into the history of creating individual components are given by the use of black and white photos from the construction phase.
The additional texts demonstrate which fundamentals, which images and which design ideas led to the respective solutions.
Dr. Ansgar Steinhausen, head of the architectural department of the magazine houses, wrote an introduction to this book.
Alexander Brenner reports in an essay about the history of his studio and the values and principles of his work.
He comments on his position to the social, legal and structural changes and shows how these circumstances affect the current and future work of his studio.
On several pages he shows - in no specific order - buildings, projects and products his studio has worked on besides to the villas projects presented in detail.
It gives an insight, which new materials, techniques and methods are currently being researched in his studio, the consequences arising from it and therefore how current and future projects and buildings will be going to look like.

Dr. Gottfried Knapp (Sueddeutsche Zeitung) on the book Alexander Brenner - Houses:

There will be few architects in Europe who have addressed the villa as a type as consistently and with such formal awareness as the Stuttgart architect Alexander Brenner.
Brenner has run his own practice in his home city of Stuttgart since 1990, and within a single decade created a series of villas responding individually to the urban situation and the owners’ needs; they are incomparable in their formal language and also in their interior coherence.
Brenner’s villas can be seen and experienced as three-dimensional works of art, lucid sculptures to live in, thoroughly modelled down to the last detail. The geometrical sculptural effect is achieved outside by the horizontals and verticals of their architectural structure and bands of windows, used to powerful graphic effect, by the thrusting canopy roofs, the cubically effective white walls pushing into the rooms individually, and by their large expanses of glazed façades. They also stand up energetically to the organically designed gardens and other outdoor spaces.
But what is completely unique is the design logic Brenner deploys to make the cubism of the external forms impact on the interior, applying it to the everyday utility objects in the living rooms, kitchen and bathroom.
Amazingly, he makes it look completely natural that not only all the cupboards in these houses are adapted to the stereometric order of the spatial continuum’s subtle rhythms, but so are all objects of everyday life.
So if there has ever been a Stuttgart style in the history of more recent architecture, as is so often asserted, then that style has achieved a new and functionally highly refined liveliness in Brenner’s houses.