The Constructivist Episode 10: Martin Jasper on architecture, AI and connected construction

In Episode 10 of The Constructivist, Wulf von Borzyskowski, CEO of All3 Construction Germany, speaks with Martin Jasper, architect and founder of Jasper Architects, about building in different markets, the role of AI in design and what it takes to make robotics useful on site. With work across Europe and the Americas, Jasper has a practical basis for comparing construction methods, costs and regulation.

He starts with the conditions that shape how buildings are delivered, contrasting the availability and cost of skilled labour in South America with the pressure to adopt new technology in Europe. He credits German building standards with producing high-quality buildings, but describes overlapping and sometimes contradictory requirements - fire safety rules that clash with energy efficiency rules, for instance - that make design and approval slow and difficult. He wants more flexibility: timber buildings permitted in Switzerland and Austria would not be allowed a few kilometres across the border in Germany.

On AI, Jasper sees the architect’s job as defining a project’s intention and protecting it from first design to completion. New tools should help realise that intention.

Nor, in his view, are serial construction and architectural ambition in conflict. Late-19th-century apartment buildings are largely identical behind their facades; the facade is what sets each one apart. Greater efficiency need not produce the same building in every town.

There is no universal answer on materials either. Jasper describes a project in Berlin’s Hohenschönhausen district with a reinforced-concrete ground floor and timber construction above, using each material where it performs best.

To close, Jasper calls for a review of regulation, conditions that make projects financially viable again, and political action to get more housing built.

Martin Jasper is the founder of Jasper Architects, an international studio with offices in Berlin, New York, Buenos Aires and Asunción. Its ‘Beyond Context’ approach combines a site’s physical and social conditions with function, sustainability and heritage. He previously worked at Metrogramma Associati in Milan and Foster + Partners in Berlin. The studio’s projects include UP! Berlin, the conversion of a former department store near Berlin’s Ostbahnhof into offices.