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EM2N, Registration offices in Basilea |
EM2N / localarchitecture / :mlzd
The a+u Japanese magazine approaches again
the Helvetian country with two suggestive titles: Swiss Sensibilites
(447) published in 2010, and Swiss Sounds (484) in 2011.
The first involves an update of the previous Swiss Passion, by
incorporating the latest production of some teams with a solid experience which
is also completed with some emerging figures of the Swiss mosaic; of these I
highlight the following three offices: EM2N,
localarchitecture: and :mlzd.
The latest
issue dedicated to this country by the Japanese publisher, Swiss Sounds, is
presented with the aim of summing up the most significant Swiss architectural
scene over a decade, that which runs from 2000
to 2009. For this summarizing work, it relies on a previous article in
which the most recent precedents of this first decade are analyzed, linking this one with the previous one: the Architecture created since 1990. This
number follows with a long selection in which the main 100 works of the studied decade are referenced (and are placed) –like
a top-hundred mode- and it continues with the exhibition of the most interesting
works from different architects. This issue
finishes with a new delivery of emerging
architects, who coincide with the three referenced in the previous number,
and the scene output of a new team that undoubtedly will take positions in the
Swiss panorama given the quality of his work: the Gramazio&Kohler studio. After reviewing the current
architecture panorama of the Confederation -from the windows that provide us
a+u pages- we stop to take a look at what are presented, with great success, as
new and whose interest we can
immediately check.
If to date
the Swiss architecture has dragged the stigma to present some introspection,
understood this as the taste for buildings arranged like objects in the
landscape, buildings closed in on themselves and, therefore, with little
contextual relationship; the architecture that EM2N offers, it changes radically with this tendency (which, on the
other hand, it is unfair as a general label). Buildings that presents this
Zurich´s office, led by Mathias Müller
and Daniel Niggli, show a greater
dialogue with its surroundings -mainly
the urban one- taking part of the city flows and with the processes of
hybridization of the uses to which the contemporary city is subjected assuming,
somehow, the postulates of Venturi in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966). From the
early Vacation House in Flumserberg (2003), to the more recent and surprising
intervention to recover for the city a urban space trapped under the spans of a
viaduct in Zurich, by creating a shopping zone, with an extraordinary
execution, the trajectory of this team is characterized for buildings with high
spatial presence and how it could not be otherwise, a technical virtuosity that
defines –this yes- by itself, the way of making of Swiss.
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EM2M, 11 Theatre refurbishment , Zurich
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EM2N, City Garden Hotel in Zug |
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EM2N, Intervention on a viaduct, Zurich |
The localarchitecture multidisciplinary
studio, based in Lausanne, was founded in 2002, his presentation card is a
small-scale work, of ephemeral architecture, that, however, has strolled his
image of origami by most
architectural publications for recent years. This is a origami to house temporarily the chapel of Diaconnesses in Pompales
(with Danilo Mondada). The formal solution and technique resolution,
inseparable in this case, are at the service of wrapping that intimate moment
that involves the praying of nuns. The Special
Education School that was raised by the team in Lausanne (2006-2009) is an
example of a formal concision and geometric rigor, dynamized, in a very subtle
way, by the rhythm of the external carpentries. In one of his last works built:
the new urban area of Market Square in Rennes (2010), the excellent trace
designed for the redevelopment of this urban space, is ruled for the filigree of
some concrete decks which, despite the apparent weight of the material used in
its execution: the concrete, seem to float on the pavement of the square, with
his petrous plates barely sustained by slender metal tubes, and inviting the
walker to come under the stone canopy.
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localarchitecture, St. Loup Temporary Chapel , Pompales |
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localarchitecture, St. Loup Temporary Chapel , Pompales |
The Special
Education School that was raised by the team in Lausanne (2006-2009) is an
example of a formal concision and geometric rigor, dynamized, in a very subtle
way, by the rhythm of the external carpentries.
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localarchitecture, Special Education School in Lausanne
|
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localarchitecture, Market Square in Renens |
In one of his last works built: the new urban area of Market Square in Rennes (2010), the excellent trace designed for the redevelopment of this urban space, is ruled for the filigree of some concrete decks which, despite the apparent weight of the material used in its execution: the concrete, seem to float on the pavement of the square, with his petrous plates barely sustained by slender metal tubes, and inviting the walker to come under the stone canopy.
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:mzld, Professional School in Biel |
The Biel
team, which was founded in 1997, :mlzd
has a brief but very interesting career. Theirs are works such as the History
Museum in Bern (2001-2009), the Professional School in Biel, the extension of
Rapperswil-Juna Museum (2007-2011), and the splendid intervention in the
Cantonal School in Wettingen (2002-2008), with an added volume, located in a
headwall, which houses the new coffee shop of the centre. This latter work is
resolved as a simple pavilion with a gable roof, that reproduces the profile of
the original building, and its interest lies in the solution found for the
cladding: an overlapped skin that was resolved with a dark aluminum punched
sheet that coats, holistically, the
entire volume of the small pavilion, filtering the light and protecting its
indoor from the views of the street with the interposition of this amazing
mechanized lattice.
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:mlzd, History Museum in Berna |
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:mlzd, canteen at the Cantonal School in Wettingen
General view and panel facade |
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:mlzd, extension of the Rapperswill-Jona Museum |
Sources:
+a+u nº 447 Swiss Passion. Shinkenchiku
+a+u nº 484 Swiss Sounds. Shinkenchiku
+Roger Frei, photographer
+Milo Keller, photographer
+Alexander Gempeler, photographer