Interview with Christian Kerez
04/03/2011.
by Studio Banana TV
metalocus, PEDRO NAVARRO
metalocus, PEDRO NAVARRO
Studio Banana TV shared with us their interview with Swiss architect Christian Kerez. Amongst his most well known projects are the Chapel in Oberrealta, the Liechtenstein Art Museum (in collaboration with Morger and Degelo), the apartment building in Forsterstrasse, the schools Breiten and Leutschenbach and more recently the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art and the Holcim Competence Center.
Leutschenbach School by Christian Kerez. Courtesy of Christian Kerez
Leutschenbach School by Christian Kerez. Courtesy of Christian Kerez
Video screenshot.
Christian Kerez. Video screenshot.
Video screenshot.
Christian Kerez was born in 1962 in Maracaibo, Venezuela, educated at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and received a Masters in Architecture in 1988. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s he was a photographer. This work, in turn, deeply influenced his architectural approach.
He was a design architect in the office of Rudolf Fontana from 1991 to 1993. After extensive published work in the field of architectural photography, he opened his own architectural office in Zurich, Switzerland in 1993. Christian Kerez has been a visiting professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich since 2001 and has been appointed as Assistant professor in design and architecture. Further, he received the 1998 Swiss art scholarship.
Kerez has built remarkably few but exquisite buildings. His architecture has often been linked to the rawness of Konkrete Kunst (Concrete art) and to the bareness of infrastructural works for which he has an admitted fascination.
Interview by Cornelia Tapparelli. Translation by Anne Buerger. Special thanks to Franziska Wittman and Hannes Oswald from the studio of Christian Kerez. Images courtesy of Christian Kerez and Walter Mair. Animation courtesy of Frontop.
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CHRISTIAN KEREZ
Christian Kerez. Swiss architect Christian Kerez, born 1962 in Maracaibo (Venezuela), will be responsible for the Swiss Pavilion exhibition at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Kerez studied at ETH Zurich and has been teaching there as Professor of Architecture and Design since 2009. Recently, Christian Kerez received international praise for his proposal for a commercial tower building in Zhengzhou, China, and a largescale social housing development project in Brazil. In Switzerland he has made a name for himself with the construction of a new school in Leutschenbach. The compact building is characterised by huge steel lattice formwork and a top-floor gym offering a panoramic view. The load-bearing structure, material and spatial concept form a unity that is both clear and complex. The conceptual stringency of Kerez’s designs also becomes apparent in his «house with one wall», a two-family home in Zurich-Witikon formed from a single slab of concrete.
Kerez seeks to enable a new spatial experience that can only be brought about by architecture. Within the design process, he combines fundamental considerations with the question of how a specific architectural concept can make a worthwhile contribution to the everyday.
Kerez seeks to enable a new spatial experience that can only be brought about by architecture. Within the design process, he combines fundamental considerations with the question of how a specific architectural concept can make a worthwhile contribution to the everyday.
