Alexander Gérard (architect)

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Alexander Gérard (born December 2, 1949 in New York City , USA ) is a German architect and real estate project developer.

Life

Alexander Gérard comes from a Berlin Huguenot family and grew up first in the USA and then in Europe . After attending school in Switzerland, England and Scotland and graduating from high school in Germany, he completed a degree in architecture from 1968 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich , which he graduated in 1973 with an ETH degree.

Among other things, Gérard attended the seminar Economic Criteria for Planning Decisions (an investigation into the conditions and causes of the housing shortage) with guest lecturer Jörn Janssen in the 1970 autumn semester . As part of the collective of authors at the architecture department of ETH Zurich , Gérard published the results of the seminar after Janssen's dismissal under the title Göhnerswil , Housing in Capitalism - An investigation into the conditions and effects of private housing production using the example of the suburban settlement 'Sunnebüel' in Volketswil near Zurich and of the general contractor Ernst Göhner AG . According to Gérard, the seminar gave an idea of ​​how the professional field of the architect is determined by the given social and economic framework.

He began his professional career at Philipp Holzmann AG in Frankfurt / Main in order to “understand in practice how economic interests and concentration of power can implement projects that completely contradict the requirements of planning in the common interest, such as regional planning.” He oversaw in the foreign projects department in the Arab world before moving to the newly created holding company Holzmann USA Inc. in Charlotte / NC in 1979, into which JA Jones Construction, acquired by Holzman in the same year, was incorporated. In 1981 Gérard took over the management of Hamburgplan Planer + Ingenieure GmbH in Hamburg, a merger of thirteen planning, architects and engineering offices, mostly based in Hamburg, with a total of around 650 employees for the purpose of handling complex planning assignments at home and abroad. In 1989 Gérard switched to real estate project developer FGV Gewerbebau Verwaltungs GmbH in Frankfurt / Main, where he became managing director in 1991. In 1995 Gérard founded the “genius loci” property development GmbH based in Hamburg, of which he has been the sole managing director since then.

chosen projects

Hanseatic Trade Center

As a former project manager and co-investor (together with Citibank , P&O and a private partner) of the Hanseatic Trade Center (HTC), Gérard was involved in the Kehrwiederspitze in Hamburg , which was the largest commercial real estate project at the time when construction began in 1991 with an investment of DM 800 million Germany was.

Elbphilharmonie

Alexander Gérard and the art historian Jana Marko, his wife, have closely followed the development of HafenCity since the construction of the Hanseatic Trade Center . The HafenCity master plan specified special public use for Kaispeicher A, but the city made a U-turn and planned to replace the historic Kaispeicher with the Media City Port office building in order to achieve maximum profit and thus finance the Altenwerder container terminal.

As a result, Gérard and Marko developed the idea and usage concept for a new concert hall with a shell structure consisting of a parking garage, hotel and apartments on the historic Kaispeicher A in a private initiative from March 2001 onwards. They commissioned the architects Herzog & de Meuron with a study which was carried out in June 2003 in the Hamburg Laeiszhalle was presented. The visualization printed in the Hamburg daily newspapers triggered a wave of enthusiasm in Hamburg and more and more citizens came out in favor of the project. Because of this public interest and the certainty that the MediaCityPort project would not materialize, the Senate approached the idea.

In October 2003 the partnership with the Hamburg-based project developer and investor Dieter Becken came about in order to implement the project in a cooperative process between the client, planners and a general contractor. In November 2004 the two initiators Alexander Gérard and Jana Marko as well as the investor Dieter Becken retired because the city wanted to take control of the project.

More Alz home

Most recently, the couple initiated the Mehr Alz Heimat project in the Brandenburg community of Kleinmachnow , which - also in collaboration with the architects Herzog & de Meuron - adjacent to Berlin-Zehlendorf on a 30,000 m² property exclusively at ground level, a future-oriented form of care and care for people with dementia and their relatives. In addition, inexpensive housing for social professions such as the nursing staff from Mehr Alz Heimat is to be built on the 20,000 m² immediately adjacent area . However, the project has met with considerable resistance on the part of the municipality, so that implementation is stalling.

Honors

  • 2005: Semper Medal from the Architektur Centrum Hamburg

Publications

  • Hamburg - HafenCity or port city? / The Hanseatic city wants to regain parts of the port area. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 2, 2000
  • ... from the perspective of a project developer, second digression. (On the subject of HafenCity Hamburg), Architecture in Hamburg, Yearbook 2000, Junius Verlag, Hamburg
  • From the point of view of a project developer. (On the subject of HafenCity Hamburg), Architektur in Hamburg, yearbook 1998, Junius Verlag, Hamburg
  • Is Bonn guilty of stolen goods? / The trouble with the return of expropriated private property. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, February 7, 1997
  • 'Göhnerswil' - Housing Construction in Capitalism / A study of the conditions and effects of private housing production using the example of the suburban settlement 'Sunnebüel' in Volketswil near Zurich and the general contractor Ernst Göhner AG. Verlagsgenossenschaft Zürich, 1972 (as a member of the collective of authors at the architecture department of the ETH Zürich). Also translated into French under the title Göhnerswil. Logement et grand capital. Librairie adversaire, Geneva, 1974.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Angelika Schnell: From Jörn Janssen to Aldo Rossi: A university political affair at the ETH Zurich . In: ARCH + . No. 215 . ARCH + Verlag GmbH, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b c d BAUWELT - It was natural that we entrusted the architects with the design of the Elbphilharmonie. In: bauwelt.de. Retrieved October 24, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Hubertus Adam: Gathered and lifted . In: espazium, Der Verlag für Baukultur (Ed.): TEC21 . Zurich 2017 ( espazium.ch [PDF]).
  4. ↑ Gert Kähler: secret project HafenCity or how do you invent a new district? Ed .: Volkwin Marg. 2016, ISBN 978-3-86218-092-9 .
  5. ↑ Interview in: Hawaii 03, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg (pages 12–13) (PDF; 3.7 MB)
  6. ^ Architektur Centrum - Society for Architecture and Building Culture eV In: architektur-centrum.de , accessed on November 6, 2018.
  7. ^ Semper Medal for the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, BauNetz
  8. ↑ Changing the image of the city, Die Welt
  9. ↑ Hermann Hipp: Laudation for the award of the Semper Medal on September 1, 2005, Architektur Centrum Hamburg (PDF; 178 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Gérard, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect and real estate project developer
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , USA