With the exhibition "Irregular," Jürgen Meier presents a body of work beginning May 6 at the Chamber of Architects North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf—one that takes his long-standing artistic engagement with architecture, spatial perception, and social structures in a surprisingly personal new direction. "Irregular" casts light on an iconic chapter of German architectural history: the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. The artist particularly examines the interplay of the key figures involved, raising a compelling question: how could epochal architecture emerge in such a relatively short timeframe?

Jürgen Meier studied in Münster, London, and Leipzig, and has worked for many years as an artist, educator, and artistic director of major light festivals in Leipzig. He proves himself a precise observer, making visible the traces of ideas, ideologies, and human decisions embedded in forms, buildings, and urban spaces. In his exhibition "Irregular," Meier engages artistically with the creation of significant German architectural icons, including the construction of the Rhine bridges. The exhibition centers on the planning process for the Olympic Village in Munich in 1972. The structures realized there—above all the visionary tent roof constructions by Frei Otto and Günther Behnisch—stand today as a radical reorientation in thinking about space, lightness, and transparency. The Olympic Village by Heinle, Wischer and Partner, meanwhile, exemplifies the principle of a city within a city and an early car-free settlement. Meier grants particular artistic attention to its project manager, architect Murray Church.

The artist is less interested in finished icons than in the protagonists and their path toward the built object. The doubts, tentative explorations, and friction between disciplines and personalities that shaped the project fascinate him. For Meier, history and context provide material that he interprets—as an artist, not as a scholar. From his artistic perspective, Jürgen Meier reconstructs the relationships among protagonists—engineers, architects, designers—and makes visible how profoundly great designs emerge from uncertainty. His works reveal that innovation rarely follows a straight path. It emerges from the irregular: from wrestling with form, from failure and resilience, from dialogue among people speaking different languages yet pursuing a shared goal. This approach defines Meier's entire body of work. His paintings, installations, and site-specific works unite analytical rigor with poetic openness. They are never mere documentation but always also interpretation—an attempt to uncover the hidden energies beneath visible structures. In "Irregular," Jürgen Meier pursues this method consistently: he transforms historical research into an aesthetic narrative about collaboration, courage, and the fragile beauty of design. The exhibition invites viewers to see architecture not as a finished object but as an ongoing process. This becomes tangible in the exhibition architecture itself: visitors are invited to walk around the exhibition object and view it from an elevated vantage point as well, from the gallery of the Chamber of Architects NRW.

On view: May 6 – June 12, 2026
Hours: Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Free admission.

www.aknw.de