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Clients have included Tim Raue and Red Bull, alongside fashion brands, restaurants, retail spaces and private clients. The studio has developed a special affinity for working within historic buildings, combining restoration with new forms and materials. Selected for inclusion in AD’s prestigious 100 in 2022 and 2023, Batek Architekten’s recent projects include a cinema renovation in Berlin’s Neukölln district. The Passage Cinema originally opened as the Excelsior in 1910 and was the subject of an extensive restoration at the turn of the decade. Batek and his team indulged the cinematic image of golden stucco and red velvet, combining historic detailing with simple contrasting colour blocking and a feeling of warm elegance. It’s a characteristic project for a studio that describes its architectural language as shaped by a feel for materials, colours and light, as well as respect for historic spaces and detailing. Batek says he values patina and re-using materials wherever possible, while acknowledging that the studio’s signature use of colour comes from the heart, driven by feelings, not reason or logic. Current projects range in scale from a total hotel design to a small city apartment.
From about the age of 6 or 7 I found myself drawing and planning small houses. By the age of 13 or 14 I knew I wanted to be an architect. My parents were both engineers, although they were not really very creative, and I’d always played around on their drawing boards. Eventually I studied architecture at Stuttgart Academy. While I was there, a friend who was a hairdresser asked me to design their new shop. I was just 24 - I had only studied for three years at that point - and I had no clue how to build something. But together with a friend I agreed to do it. The project was a success and was featured on a magazine cover and that was the beginning.
Although I studied conventional architecture, these early projects led to a focus on interior design, starting with several more hairdressers. Today I would say 95% of our work is interiors, although ‘normal’ architects mostly make fun of interior designers, it seems. After graduating, I spent a year in New York working for Richard Meier. I came back to Berlin looking for a job, rather than working for myself. However, it was tough economic times in the city at that point, so I set up on my own. We did a lot of hotels, hospitality, restaurants and shops.
We have more and more private clients, I would say. This is partly due to Covid, of course – perhaps 80% of our current workload is for private projects. The pandemic led to people spending more time at home and come to value their personal space. I’d say it’s much easier to work with people who have the budget to achieve what they want.
For a start we don’t have a typical design style, or line. In a way, I’m sort of a service provider – I’m there for the client. Our concept is to be as empathetic as possible and get a good feeling for the client and their requirements and translate that into space. There’s also our strong sense of colour – perhaps it’s because I worked with Richard Meier and I went the opposite direction! I’ve also always been influenced by fashion design. One of my first retail jobs was at Michael Gabellini’s studio – he was the architect of Jil Sander’s retail stores in the 90s.
Absolutely. Yesterday we were shooting our new house in Munich for AD magazine. The family has several bathrooms, and in designing them we used the company’s entire colour palette for the ironmongery, including yellow, blue, red, white, grey, green and even brass. With big spaces, you don’t want a unified corporate design approach. We want them to be liveable and for spaces like bathrooms to be different and have individual characters. To achieve this, we use different materials with VOLA products. We recently did another apartment in Berlin that has six bathrooms; each is finished in a completely different material. VOLA definitely helps us open up our creativity. They are the original.
There isn’t one particular building or space that I’d like to build or renovate. However, when it comes to private clients, I don’t want to create spaces that feel corporate. However, I also like the ability to create spaces that feel like self-contained worlds, whether it’s an office or a hotel. We’re currently working on a boutique hotel project where we’ve collaborated on every aspect of the design, right down to the cups and the graphics on the menus. That’s what I like doing most, working together to create a complete world with a talented group of people.
We’re just ten people here, nine of whom are architects, and one is our CFO. I didn’t want it to grow too much as it feels like a small family. People here work with their brain and with their gut. Many of the staff have been here for five to ten years. It’s an empathetic studio –we were very supportive of each other.
I try to be in every project, from concept design onwards, as well as helping to get client approval. I’m not trying to be a control freak! Every project has its own project manager, and we have about eight or nine projects on the go at various stages at any one time. To me, it’s really important that interior architecture works hand in hand with a building. Wherever necessary, we work closely with landscape architects, and we’ll often collaborate with other offices on things like structure.
We’re doing more and more historic renovations and conversions. Currently we have an old country house on Sylt Island in the west of Germany. It’s one of my favourite projects – it was an old captain’s house. When we started, we visited the island’s museum to explore the original plans for the house, as well as study materials like traditional Delft tiles. This wasn’t so we could replicate the original materials, but explore how to interpret them for today.
We build a close connection with our clients and try to get a real feeling from them about their lives, reading between the lines at times and translating what they want into design reality. It’s not about being egotistical – we’re providing a design service at the end of the day.
You have to learn the business stuff, and of course nobody teaches you that - we should definitely have economics classes in architectural education! What I love most is the start of the project – the first connection with clients, and the period of research. But ultimately that’s only 10% of what I do. You need to become close with clients but also remember that you’re not their best friend.
We spend a lot of time discussing this subject with clients. For example, when it comes to colours, they often worry if they’ll still like something a few years down the line. But if you look at somewhere like Berlin’s Tegel Airport [with its iconic 70s colour schemes], that endured until it closed in 2021. So how can one bring this sort of longevity to a project? I think the most important thing is to have a very intensive briefing period, although this can be very subjective from client to client. In a way, we’re very lucky, because those who can afford this kind of architecture tend to know what they want, and they understand that it might take time. Inexperienced clients often don’t have the patience or understanding.
There are a lot of ingredients – the quality of the workmanship, the local conditions like site and landscape, the existing space, if there is any, as well as the character and personality of the clients. With materials, it’s important to be authentic – it’s never fake wood, for example, always real.
When architecture is sleek, it needs a punch, a colour that breaks up the harmony. I’m a big fan of the work of Vincent Van Duysen, but sometimes I feel it needs that element of colour to come through. When it comes to materials, I particularly like bringing together things don’t ‘belong’ together in the traditional sense, like stone and aluminium, for example. In one recent project, we’re re-using marble from SolidNature’s collaboration with OMA at Milan Design Week 2023. If you mount thin sheets of marble on aluminium honeycomb, it creates a contrast and tension between the shape and perceived weight of the material. Also, recycling is becoming more and more important. We’re using a recycled plastic as a construction material for shelving, for example. However, we need to be careful, because in the field of luxury design such materials require gentle persuasion. We have a huge table in our office where we can show off new materials to our clients.
Many of our clients are very design literate and they know about Arne Jacobsen, so specifying VOLA is perhaps an easy choice. Bringing them to other non-traditional finishes, like natural brass, is a bit harder but as these recent projects have shown this is changing as well. In fact, I feel like there’s something of a VOLA revival right now – the brand is really having a moment.
