The architecture of Herzog & de Meuron

This exhibition was presented for the first time at the Biennial of architecture of Venice in 1991 (commissaire: Cäsar Menz). It gives an outline of constructions that the two Swiss architects carried out these last years in Switzerland as well as Italy, France and Germany.

The philosophy which underlies the architecture of Herzog & de Meuron finds its expression in the following sentence: “The shape of a house, it is not that which the architect or the artist give to it. It is not that either that the technician or the specialist in statics give to it. It is the form given to it by the one who looks at it”. In this case, this glance is of four photographers: Margherita Krischanitz, Balthasar Burkhard, Hannah Villiger and Thomas Ruff.

Their glance poses itself on the surface of the buildings, on their form, letting guess the subjacent laws which structure them. For Burkhard and Krischanitz, the frontages are elements which form part of a global order, while for Ruff and Villiger, they are transparent membranes which connect the inside and the outside. All highlight, with their way, the importance that the envelope of the building occupies in the architecture of Herzog & de Meuron, as intermediate body between the laws which control construction and the place where it is located.

At the occasion of this exhibition, Fri-Art also presents a video realization of Enrique Fontanilles on the exhibition Architektur Denkform that the museum of architecture of Bâle devoted to the two architects in 1988.