Anglo German alliance: A new show of Sauerbruch Hutton's oeuvre has opened in Munich.

Sauerbruch Hutton, perhaps the most successful contemporary Anglo/German architectural partnership, is currently staging an extraordinary exhibition in the Bavarian capital where two of the practice's most prominent buildings, the Brandhorst Museum and the ADAC (HQ for the German Motor Club), are currently under construction. Reminiscent of the serial nature of minimalist music, the exhibition's enigmatic title (1234) gives no clue as to the sensory appeal of the show, an aesthetic pleasure of the highest order.

Throughout the entire exhibition rhythm, repetition, syncopation and a curvilinear swing pervade Matthias Sauerbruch's and Louisa Hutton's use of architectural form, colour, content and material. Four very differently defined and designed exhibition spaces reveal a well accentuated demonstration of how architecture can be portrayed. The show's underlying raison d'etre is the transition of the architectural artifact through various means of representation.

The first room is elegantly furnished with small-scale models sitting on slender metal plinths. No perspex hoods or labels distract your attention from the objects. Walls are treated in the same purist manner--large-scale sheets of perspex display axonometric etchings of 14 seminal projects. No particular project, be it the ecologically sophisticated GSW-Tower in Berlin (AR December 2000) or the snaking Federal Environmental Agency in Dessau (AR July 2005) is highlighted for its size or importance. The evolution of Sauerbruch Hutton appears as a continuous process without any drama but full of harmony and equipoise.

How architecture can convey a clearly defined message in our media-driven society is demonstrated in the next two rooms. These are conceived as dark cabinets which confront the viewer in one room with a 60-minute video installation by film maker Ute Adamczewski on three screens. The protagonists are buildings, clients, users and Matthias and Louisa themselves in an interview with Aaron Betsky. Architecture is seen as a recognisable brand, an image and a product. Betsky sympathetically elicits responses from the architects.

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Room three forms a contrast with the extrovert nature of the previous installation. Each wall has just one large-scale photograph of a facade section shot by Finnish artist Ola Kolehmainen. Here the atmospheric nature of architecture is cast into a more contemplative format, bestowing a sophisticated aura of fine art. The photographs deny the architecture. They are neither monumental nor sentimental, yet a highly expressive air of balanced light and colour characterise the building portrayals.

As you step into the brightly lit fourth room, the visitor metaphorically enters the engine room of Sauerbruch Hutton. Here homespun tables display material samples and crude polystyrene working models, and walls are almost fully covered by plans and large-scale mock-ups of facades. The exhibits in this room all represent a single project: the Museum for the Brandhorst Collection (AR April 2005) which is being built literally next to the Pinakothek der Moderne. From a particular spot marked on the floor, you can observe the construction emerging. Black lines on the huge gallery windows outline the shape of the final building as seen from this vantage point.

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The exhibition will continue until the Brandhorst is topped out, ie, until the outlined window space is filled. If everything goes to plan, the filled outline will coincide with the end of the exhibition in October. Hence the building site Baustelle, beyond the window becomes a Schaustelle--a punning play on words with references to the theatre (Schausteller is literally a showman). The act of watching a building evolve has become very popular in Germany since the making, celebrating and documenting of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz. So the raw materiality and processes of the construction site finally catch up with and expand upon the schemes rehearsed and played out with such finesse in the preceding quartet of exhibition rooms.

1234 The Architecture of Sauerbruch Hutton, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich until 22 October www.pmakothek.de