Our Story

Prof. Xaver Egger began his professional career in 1992 in Hamburg, where a partner office still exists under the same name with partners Juan Hidalgo, Andreas Horlitz and Christoph Winkler. Founded as schreiber.egger architekten by Martin Schreiber and Xaver Egger, the firm has undergone several transformations throughout its history.

“From the first attempts at walking, the move from the Elbe to the Spree, first experiences on the international stage and wherever else love strikes”

The move from Hamburg to Berlin was prompted in 1996 by the first Sehw competition success for a major project at Humboldt University. Thus “lured” to Berlin, Sehw was faced with the stimulating spirit of optimism of the 90s with all its architectural possibilities; but at the same time it was confronted with the task of forging relationships in a new, initially foreign environment. In addition, the first economic dents in the state of Berlin were already evident in the mid-nineties, in the form of budget freezes by the Senate administration, which made building for the public sector unpredictable. This gave rise to the idea of proactively initiating our own projects on the basis of empirical analyses.

In 2000, a large British client offered Sehw the opportunity for a Europe-wide project development in the field of health and wellness. Several projects were developed and planned at various locations in Germany, Austria and the Iberian Peninsula. This began with site research and evaluation and ended with a design that focused on specific target groups, while at the same time incorporating the particular identities of each location. Not an easy task, but just the right thing for the out-of-the-box thinkers at Sehw. A recurring theme that stands for recognizability and at the same time creates individual spatial qualities, and is pleasing to the eye.

Another special feature of Sehw: the conscious strategic decision as a young office to go where the jobs are, since they would not come to them. This is how several branches have been established to date.

In Austria, Sehw became well-integrated relatively quickly in 2002. Since then, the Vienna office has planned and implemented several projects in Austria, mainly in the fields of health care and science and research. In addition, Sehw accompanies public and private clients as consultants in this area of public services, regarding necessary change processes and their impact on needs and on design.

In 2009, the Stuttgart branch followed through projects for the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft for applied research and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and most recently in 2018, the Rhine-Ruhr region through projects in Essen, Düsseldorf, Mülheim, Dortmund and several other cities in North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition to the strong focus on school construction, the main field of activity here is on projects for the real estate industry in the areas of living and working.

It is therefore been advantageous that Prof. Xaver Egger has already been active in the Ruhr region since 2010 with his appointment as professor at Bochum University of Applied Sciences. His master’s degree programme in Architecture Project Development that he directs has developed into an urban lab for the Ruhr region when it comes to innovative answers to the questions of our time: We are becoming fewer, more diverse, older. That is the challenge we are facing and for which we want to build houses.

Prof. Xaver Egger

Born in 1965 in Altötting, Bavaria, Xaver Egger first made an apprenticeship as a carpenter, before studying architecture at the Munich University of Applied Sciences and sculptural design at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf. A few years after his diploma in 1992, he established his own studio in 1996, which is a registered brand today.

Beside his work as CEO of Sehw, Xaver Egger is a professor at the department of architecture at Bochum University of Applied Sciences. There he established the master’s programme ArchitekturProjektEntwicklung, which is unique in the German educational system. The programme covers everything from demographic issues, social issues and political debates of our time such as migration, shrinking vs. rapidly growing cities, the aging of society, study of trends, tendencies and behaviours to analyses and the concrete development of projects including yield and investment calculations, financing models, etc.

Prof. Xaver Egger is a member of the Association of German Architects (BDA) Berlin and the ZIA Zentraler Immobilien Ausschuss e.V., the umbrella organisation of the German real estate industry, where he is involved in the committees for urban development and human resources. He is active in an advisory capacity in the field of architecture for the Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy at the Federation of German Industries e.V. (BDI) and is a member of the “City as Campus” network of the National Urban Development Policy initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Prof. Xaver Egger is involved in the Stiftung Zukunft Berlin in the field of urban development and is a member of the Urban Planning and Design Advisory Board of the Federal City of Bonn.

Xaver Egger is married, has two children and lives and works mainly in Berlin.