Albert Frey (architect)

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The Tramway Gas Station in Palm Springs

Albert Frey (born October 18, 1903 in Zurich , † November 14, 1998 in Palm Springs (California) ) was a Swiss architect whose main place of work focused on Palm Springs and was later referred to as desert modernism .

Life

Frey received his diploma at the Technikum Winterthur in 1924 . There Frey tried his hand at traditional buildings and received more technical commissions than design in the later popular Beaux Arts style. Before he received his diploma, he did an apprenticeship with the architect AJ Arter in Zurich and worked on assignments during his vacation times. In 1925 he went to Brussels to Eggericx and Verwilghen , and in 1928 he worked for Le Corbusier in Paris, where he worked on the planning of the Villa Savoye .

In 1930 he moved to the United States; in New York a working group with Alfred Lawrence Kocher (1885-1969), who was editor of the journal Architectural Record , was established until 1935 . In addition to the only four built designs of this partnership - their aluminum house for the Allied Arts and Building Products Exhibition was widely received - and publications in Architectural Record , Frey also worked as a design architect for William Lescaze .

In 1934, Frey moved to Palm Springs , California, where he met his next partner, John Porter Clark (1905–1991), with whom he worked for about twenty years, for the implementation planning of the Kocher-Samson House . There Frey, who had meanwhile returned to New York from 1937–1939 to help plan the Museum of Modern Art , “ devoted himself to“ the appropriate response to the demands of the California desert. The closed building cubes, designed regardless of their location, begin to dissolve and reach into the landscape as individual wall panels. They are held together by the roof element placed horizontally above it, which also acts as a ‹brise-soleil› »

With partner Robson C. Chambers , who joined the company in 1952, and Clark's departure in 1956, the architecture of the office became more obvious and pictorial, which can be seen, for example, in the North Shore Yacht Club (1959) on the Salton Sea. In the 1960s - Frey separated from Chambers in 1966 and then continued to work alone - he returned to simpler forms.

Work (selection)

  • Project for a steel and glass factory , Zurich, 1927
  • Retirement home , competition entry, Zurich, 1928
  • Project for a minimal metal house , Zurich, 1928
  • Aluminum House , Syosset, Nassau County, New York, 1930–31 (with Alfred Lawrence Kocher)
  • River Garden , Settlement, 1931, project for William Lescaze
  • Gut-Frey residential building , Zurich, 1933
  • Canvas Weekend Home Kocher , Northport, New York, 1934
  • Kocher-Samson House , Palm Springs, 1934
  • Frey I House , Palm Springs, 1940 (1947, 1953)
  • Loewy House , Palm Springs, 1946-47
  • Air Tram Valley Station, Palm Springs, 1949–63 (with John Porter Clark and Robson C. Chambers)
  • Desert Hospital , Palm Springs, 1950-52
  • North Shore Yacht Club , Salton Sea, 1955-59
  • Air Tram Gas Station , Palm Springs, 1963-65
  • Frey II House , Palm Springs, 1963-64

literature

  • Ursula Spitz: Albert Frey . In: Isabelle Rucki, Dorothee Huber (Hrsg.): Architects Lexicon of Switzerland. 19./20. Century. Birkhäuser, Basel 1998, ISBN 3-7643-5261-2 , p. 187 f.

Web links

Commons : Albert Frey  - collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Ursula Spitz: Albert Frey . In: Isabelle Rucki, Dorothee Huber (Hrsg.): Architects Lexicon of Switzerland. 19./20. Century. Birkhäuser, Basel 1998, p. 188.
personal data
SURNAME Frey, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss-American architect
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1998
Place of death Palm Springs (California)