Berlin based architects J. MAYER H. don’t do things by halves. Early on this year we featured their great leviathan of timber in Seville, a colossus of sculptured wood that can rival any public space in the world for the title of most jaw-dropping, and two years ago we proclaimed that their permanent exhibition space at Volkswagen’s Autostadt must have been “born from some crazy hallucinogenic toad-licking experience”. They’re a practice who deal in the stupendous, the spectacular, and the down-right weird. Which of course brings us to their latest work, a customs checkpoint situated at the shore of the Black Sea on the Georgian border into Turkey.

Now, surely any architect taking drawings of a project like this through customs would be collared for the ‘full search’, let alone be allowed to call in the construction workers and break ground. But this is a country who want to represent their progressiveness on the global stage, and what better way than with a 40 metre high jigsaw piece?

Housing a cafeteria, staff rooms and conference space alongside the usual customs facilities, J. MAYER H.’s Sarpi Border Checkpoint is as astounding a welcome to a country as you may see, and even a reason in itself to vist. For services to the outlandish and utterly unconventional in architecture, J. MAYER H. we salute you…

Photography: Jesko Malkolm Johnsson-Zahn, Beka Pkhakadze