Sir David Chipperfield has selected the 34 year-old Swiss designer and academic, Simon Kretz, as his protégé in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative for 2016–2017. The announcement was made at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Kretz will observe and work at Sir David’s practice at several points over the year.
Kretz is not exactly a novice, in an architectural or intellectual sense. In 2010, he co-founded his first practice in Zurich with Christina Nater, which specializes in one-off houses and interventions in historic buildings; in 2014, Kretz and Christian Salewski established a studio that concentrates largely on urban design. Kretz is also a Senior Lecturer in Urban and Spatial Design at ETH Zurich, and in Design Thinking at the University of Zurich.

It is no surprise, then, that his favourite project by Chipperfield is the restoration and transformation of Berlin’s magnificent 19th-century Neues Museum, which reopened in 2009 after languishing as a bomb-ruined hulk for 60 years. “It’s like going back to school,” says Kretz of the new and old parts of the building. “It’s a museum, but it’s also an encyclopaedia of architecture, and this I truly love.”

He was travelling on a packed train when he learned that Sir David had selected him as his protégé. “I was overjoyed,” he says, “but I couldn’t share the moment. Being next to complete strangers was not the ideal setting for receiving such great news.”

His selection followed interviews of shortlisted Rolex protégé finalists at Sir David’s London studio, followed by dinner – “which was really fun. He’s very humorous, and we didn’t really talk about architecture. The subjects ranged from Brexit [the possibility of Britain leaving the European Union], to Berlusconi, to what we did in our free time.”

Before setting up his two practices, Simon worked as an intern at the studio of eminent architect Rem Koolhaas, who is arguably the profession’s most provocative and high-profile thinker. Kretz has been particularly inspired by the ideas of the 19th-century Prussian city planner Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and the Spanish architect and urban designer Manuel de Solà-Morales. The Austrian architect, Hermann Czech, one of his teachers at ETH Zurich, and the university’s head of urban design, Kees Christiaanse, have also influenced him.
 
“I like people who don’t think of architecture as the last thing, and then it’s finished,” he explains. “I think of architecture as the first thing – the beginning of something.”

Kretz’s sense of architecture as being special had its own “beginning of something” moment. At about the age of 17, he realized his home town, Fribourg, was having a profound effect on him. John Ruskin, the great English art and architectural historian, visited the town in the 1850s, painting and sketching views. “Hills, bridges, medieval sandstone. Living in these surroundings had a huge emotional and atmospheric impact,” he says.

In the 21st century, architectural design and urban change have become an often tense struggle between historic settings and commercial, social and ethical forces. Kretz recalls a remark by Sir David: “Architects can’t just put the icing on the cake if the cake is wrong.” But he emphasizes “this doesn’t mean I like concepts rather than physical things.” And his current projects are proof of this; they include the replanning of a century-old part of the Swiss city of Thun, a redevelopment in Grenzach-Wyhlen, Germany, and the design of an ecologically sensitive nature and boating site at the confluence of the Rhine and Töss rivers near Zurich.

Kretz plans to use the period as a Rolex protégé to do research at David Chipperfield Architects on how design ideas arise and evolve, and how they relate to critical thinking. “I’m interested in how ideas change in our minds,” he says. “The moment you project an idea of the town or city that’s different to what it is now, you are experimenting with reality. And more ideas come from these experiments – even drawing or making cardboard architectural models can make new ideas appear.”

He believes architectural ideas should promote urban civility, diverse activities and social connections – “qualities that are the basis of really open cities”. Architects, he adds, should also design buildings or urban transformations with a full understanding of the economic and commercial forces involved. And in Sir David Chipperfield, Kretz knows he will be learning from an architect whose designs have confronted these issues for decades.
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David Chipperfield was born in London in 1953 and studied architecture at the Kingston School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London before working at the practices of Douglas Stephen, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster.

In 1985 he founded David Chipperfield Architects, which today has over 300 staff at its offices in London, Berlin, Milan and Shanghai.

David Chipperfield has taught and held conferences in Europe and the United States and has received honorary degrees from the universities of Kingston and Kent.

He is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and an honorary fellow of both the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Bund Deutscher Architekten (BDA). In 2009 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and in 2010 he received a knighthood for services to architecture in the UK and Germany. In 2011 he received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture and in 2013 the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association, while in 2021 he was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in recognition of a lifetime’s work.

In 2012 he curated the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

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Simon Kretz (1982), founder and partner of the studio Salewski & Kretz, Diplom-Architect (ETH Zurich). Self-employed praxis as architect since 2010. Design and execution in the fields of new buildings, heritage conservation, and conversion. International project experience at Office for Metropolitan Architecture Rotterdam and KCAP Architects and Planners Zurich. Senior Assistant and Lecturer for Urban Design at ETH Zurich and University of Zurich (CUREM). National research projects and publications, ongoing PhD research on design methodology under a grant of the National Research Project 65 of the Swiss Science Foundation SNF.
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Published on: May 26, 2016
Cite: "SIMON KRETZ selected by DAVID CHIPPERFIELD in the Rolex "Mentors and protégés in Architecture 2016" " METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/simon-kretz-selected-david-chipperfield-rolex-mentors-and-proteges-architecture-2016> ISSN 1139-6415
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