Christ & Gantenbein is an architecture practice. Founded in 1998 by Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein, and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, the office employs a team of over 80 architects from 20 countries.
The firm‘s most prominent completed projects include the expansion and transformation of the Swiss National Museum in Zurich and the extension of the Kunstmuseum Basel, both cultural landmarks with a global reach.
In 2020, the office completed the multifunctional Lindt Home of Chocolate, a monumental yet versatile space for Lindt & Sprüngli in Zurich. Furthermore, C&G is working on a diverse range of projects across Europe. Among them are a social housing development in Paris, a versatile office building for Roche in Germany, the extension of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, and most recently, a housing and office building in the historic center of Hamburg. Underscoring the diversity of scale and program the office operates in, the Zurich University Hospital project, which is currently in development, will transform an entire district of Switzerland‘s most populous city, giving healthcare and medical research an unrivalled new home.
Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein graduated in the ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in 1998, since then they have maintained a balance between their profession and academic involvement. After lectureships inter alia at the ETH Studio Basel (2000–2005), the HGK Basel (2002–2003), the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio (2004, 2006, 2009) and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (2008), they returned to the ETH Zurich (2010–2015). They currently teach at Harvard GSD.
After internationally acclaimed projects in London, Jalisco (Mexico) and Jinhua (China), their studio Christ & Gantenbein continues to cement its reputation at home and abroad with numerous museum concepts as well as a broad range of private and public commissions. Among the designs most recently realised stand out an extension to the Kunstmuseum Basel, the renovation of and extension to the Swiss National Museum in Zurich.
In the spring of 2019, Christ & Gantenbein presented the first monographic exhibition of their most iconic buildings in Japan with “The Last Act of Design”. The same year, the studio contributed pieces to “The Poetics of Reason” at the 5th edition of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale. In 2017 the practice was invited to contribute to the Chicago Architecture Biennale, while the previous year, it participated in the 15th Venice Biennale “Reporting from the Front”.
