Prefabricated buildings have always had a particular fascination. The architectural style — characterized by serial repetition, modular construction, clear grids, reduced forms and functional design — is just as interesting as the social level: the coexistence of different cultures, the dynamics of everyday life, and the question of how such places shape our understanding of city and community. At the same time, prefabricated buildings are also historically charged; they report on political, social and urban development developments.
During a week-long project in Berlin, independent graphic designer and F+F lecturer Nick Billinger dedicated himself to Gropiusstadt, one of Germany's most famous prefabricated housing estates. Through repeated forays and photographic approaches, he has examined, observed and documented the historic site. The resulting images are an attempt to gain insights into a complex living space from outside. They range between documentary distance and personal closeness, between sober observation and subtle rapprochement. Billinger, who also heads the Foundation Year department at the art school, has thus created an area of tension that makes less explained than visible, and that deliberately leaves questions unanswered.
The exhibited risograph prints and the Gropiusstadt-Zine are available for sale in store.
Warja Lavater, born in Winterthur in 1913 and passed away in Zurich in 2007, moved with her creative, always poetic work in a broad field between literature and art, whose prominent pillars were graphic design, illustration, painting, and object design. As a "picture maker," as she sometimes called herself, she developed a genuine, unique visual language, with her "Folded Stories" (fold-out books) and "Imageries" gaining particular international recognition and fame.
Warja Lavater spent her childhood in Moscow, Athens, and her hometown of Winterthur. In 1931, she began her training at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts and officially graduated as a graphic designer in 1935. Together with her husband Gottfried Honegger, she subsequently ran the Honegger-Lavater studio, and in 1958, she also designed the famous ten panels of "The Line" for the second Swiss Exhibition for Women's Work (SAFFA) in Zurich. With the move to New York that soon followed, Warja Lavater realized that symbols could also be an international form of visual communication, from which she developed her distinctive pictograms.
In the late 1960s, she began collaborating with Parisian publisher Adrien Maeght, who published her "Imageries," which emphasized the intermedial interplay of accordion books (Leporello) and pictographic writing. In parallel, significant works in public spaces emerged, including the wall ceramics of the Strickhof water reservoir in Zurich and the design of the Gontenbach and Hardhof water towers. These and other fascinating aspects have been explored by Warja Lavater's daughter, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, in the book "Warja Lavater – Leidenschaft und Vernunft" (everyedition).
A guest event by everyedition, followed by a book sale and aperitif. Admission is free. The presentation will be held in German.
Over two decades, a fruitful collaboration developed between the renowned Zurich industrial designer Jörg Boner and the equally acclaimed Ticino photographer Milo Keller, creating an iconic visual universe around Boner's design projects. What unites the two protagonists, as quickly becomes clear when looking at this extraordinary book, is their keen interest in substantive engagement and historical awareness within their respective fields.
“Views on Things”, the title of the work, has two beginnings and no end – the book conceptually starts from Keller's and Boner's personal journeys and can literally be read in two directions. In an anecdotal dialogue about their realized projects, they illuminate their shared endeavor and their individual work. Enriched by introductory texts from Anniina Koivu, curator and author specializing in design, and Bruno Ceschel, curator and publisher, this volume presents the result of a shared vision and a creative exchange that unites photography and industrial design.
The two met at the ECAL University of Art and Design in Lausanne, where designer Jörg Boner held a professorship from 2003 to 2014. Milo Keller had been working at ECAL since 2007. Five years later, he took over as head of the Bachelor's program in Photography, and in 2016, also at ECAL, he founded the first Master's program in Photography in Switzerland. His works were exhibited, among other places, at the Aperture Gallery in New York, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, and the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich. Sadly, Keller passed away last year after a long illness.
An event by Scheidegger & Spiess and Never Stop Reading, followed by a book sale and aperitif. Admission is free. The presentation will be held partly in German, partly in English.
The new book «Architects of Eastern Switzerland» is (also) a story of emancipation: It presents historical and contemporary female role models and injects dynamism into the feminist architectural discourse. The book compiles remarkable buildings since 1900: pioneering studio houses by Hedwig Scherrer in the St. Gallen Rhine Valley (1906/07) and by Sophie Taeuber-Arp outside Paris (1927/28), a postmodern garage with a sports center (1988) in St. Gallen by Vreny Gross, or the ongoing development of Herisau by Eva Keller since the 1990s.
Author Nina Keel prioritizes teamwork and solidarity over individual stars and sheds light on the changing structural working conditions. The chapters on influential female architects and their projects answer questions such as: What inspires them and which building tasks are important to them? How do they organize their offices? What (informal) networks existed and exist? In a detailed conversation, architects Astrid Staufer and Kathrin Gimmel discuss design tools, collaboration in their architectural firms, and the importance of architectural ventures. In photo essays created for the book, artist Jiajia Zhang showcases five female architects in their own buildings, while Nina Keel photographed buildings by Eva Lanter (BATIMENTS), Corinna Menn, or Trix Haussmann-Högl during walks through St. Gallen.
An event by Park Books publishing house and Never Stop Reading, followed by a book sale and aperitif. Admission is free. The presentation will be held in German.