Querkraft

Peter Sapp: In the long run it was impossible to answer the telephone with: 'Dunkl, Erhartt, Sapp & Zinner – hello!'

Jakob Dunkl: It sounds like a lawyer's office.

PS: We hadn't wanted to make up an artificial name but we didn't have a choice.

JD: Someone once said we cultivate a poetic pragmatism. The initiative was completely pragmatic. Not: 'We need a pop band name'. But rather: 'This is too tiresome'. And then: 'Now that we're going to have a name, it should do something; it should resonate'. Resonate emotionally.

PS: The name also connects with our first project at the Museumsquartier. That is where we noticed that our approach is to think outside the box (which is called 'Querdenken' in German). From then on, questioning the way design tasks are set became our central motif.

JD: We want to erase the term 'low budget' from our vocabulary. Efficiency is what it's all about. We have learned that when you build in a low-budget way – as we did when we started – then you work efficiently with the means at your disposal. That marks you for life. The Adidas Brand Centre was not a cheap building, but you can make very efficient use of the money and thus build much more of a spatial programme than called for in the brief. A nice example to my mind is Citroën: they built the 2CV and the DS, the 'goddess', at about the same time, in the same spirit, with the same engineers. You don't have to build 2CVs all the time; you can also use a lot of money and create a car that goes down in history.