Macaronic Architecture

We live in a macaronic moment—a time of layered languages, fragmented narratives, and
hybrid materials. Traditionally, macaronic describes texts that mix languages, but here, it
speaks to a condition of creative hybridity, where materials, meanings, and methods
intersect. If, as Mikhail Bakhtin suggests, “heteroglossia means different voices living
together in one language,” architecture can respond to these plural realities by becoming a
space that holds, negotiates, and assembles different entities.

Being macaronic is not only a creative act—it can also be an involuntary strategy for survival.
Reuse, circular economies, and informal building practices are tendencies that emerge as a
response to environmental and social catastrophes. Through makeshift constructions,
layering, mixing, translating, code-switching, and re-assembling, we can see architecture not as a unified statement but as a conscious ongoing construction of diverse technologies.

This workshop views the architect as a kind of polyglot: someone who can move fluently
across design languages, construction techniques, contexts, and ecological systems—while
remaining critically aware of one’s position. Borrowing the fascinating logic of macaronic
languages, we will explore constructions by assembly over time, adding up and piling upon.
The outcome of this workshop will take the form of architectural models incorporating
macaronic principles—layered, hybrid structures and poetic collisions that visually and
materially represent the intersection of multiple systems, all alive to their contradictions.


ae:g, founded by Christina Ehrmann and Christopher Gruber, is interested in the complex
relationships between living beings, objects, and processes around us in space. By taking
the resulting practices, habits, and rituals as the starting point of an exploration in space.
We are searching for refined ecological, metropolitan, and usable distinctions – enriching the spatial identities of sites. We enjoy places of authenticity. We celebrate the expressive
abilities of constructions and the slight nuances of doing things differently. By nurturing social interaction, our endeavours seek to react to both a collective, a human, and a non-human scale. Imagining the perspectives of others to redefine spaces of the domestic and the wild. We understand architecture as a result of moulded grounds, waterflooded surfaces, condensed atmospheric volumes and illuminated shades. To us, advocating for
experimentation and exploration, liberty in construction primarily entails consistently
challenging one’s own beliefs. As a gleeful act of poetic imagination, we aspire to craft
spaces and venues of tranquility, modesty, and wonder, contributing to a good life.

Christina Ehrmann studied art and architecture (BArch/MArch) at the Academy of Fine Arts
Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture, with a study residency at the Bartlett School of
Architecture (UCL) in London, and received her master‘s degree 2023 with distinction
(appreciation prize of the Academy for artistic works 06/2023). She was a research assistant within the research project „Raumpark Wien – Vienna in times of the new climatic regime“ of the platform ESC – Ecology, Sustainability and Cultural Heritage at the Institute of Art and Architecture (IKA) at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (04-07/2023). She was University Assistant at studio díazmoreno garcíagrinda at the Institute of Architecture (I oA) at the Angewandte in Vienna (10/2023 - 07/2024).

Christopher Gruber is a trained carpenter and studied art and architecture (BArch/MArch) at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture, with a study residency at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) in London, and received his master‘s degree 2021 with distinction (appreciation prize of the Academy for artistic works 06/2022). He was University Assistant at studio díazmoreno garcíagrinda at the Institute of Architecture (I oA) at the Angewandte in Vienna (03/2022 - 09/2024). Since October 2024 he is Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Art and Architecture (IKA) at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

www.atelierehrmanngruber.com

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