Alphonse Laverrière

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Immeuble Cité Bel-Air Métropole, Lausanne, 1929–32.

Alphonse Laverrière (born May 16, 1872 in Carouge ; † March 11, 1954 in Lausanne , resident in Carouge) was a French - Swiss architect and professor at the ETH Zurich .

Laverrière, whose family came from Savoy - he did not acquire Swiss citizenship until 1911 - studied art at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva from 1887 to 1890 and from 1892 at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris . After studying watercolor painting for a long time, he later also studied architecture. In 1901 he received his diploma from Jean-Louis Pascal . He then worked as an architect in Lausanne and worked with Eugène Monod (1871–1929) from 1902 to 1915 .

Initially, the office mainly built villas, and Laverrière was able to publish the watercolor drawings in various architecture magazines. The office won various competitions, such as the Chauderon Bridge completed in 1905 (engineers: Valliere and Simon) and from 1908 the Lausanne train station and from 1909 the Geneva Reformation Monument (both together with Taillens and Dubois). Together with Monod he designed the monument for Jean-Gabriel Eynard, inaugurated on May 4, 1908 .

There were also various office, commercial and residential buildings around the Place St. François, the then developing city center. Laverrière attached great importance to working closely with structural engineers, artists and craftsmen, similar to Henry van de Velde and Joseph Maria Olbrich , who, according to Tobler, influenced Laverrière. In 1908 he married Adèle Jeannette Lithauer, a US citizen born in Pietermaritzburg , South Africa in 1882 .

Laverrières grave on the Cimetière du Bois-de-Vaux in Lausanne

In 1913 he was a founding member of the L'Œuvre association, an association with ties to the Werkbund , which published a newspaper of the same name. Laverrière dealt with interior decoration and furniture designs. From 1917 to 1926 he built for the Zenith watch factory and was the company's artistic director from 1918 to 1926. His works after the First World War - and after the end of his collaboration with Monod - from 1919 onwards included the Bois-de-Vaux cemetery in the Montoie / Bourdonnette district , the completion of which took over thirty years until 1951, the Federal Courthouse (together with Prince and Béguin, who won the competition, 1922-27) and the Bel Air Tower (1929-32), an object of fierce contemporary polemics and at the same time highly recognized, like the Chauderon Bridge and the train station are now cultural assets of national importance , in Nyon the community hall (1929–32) and in the mid-1940s the botanical garden in Lausanne .

Laverrière received the Olympic medal in gold in the art competitions of the 1912 Summer Olympics . He was a member of the Swiss Association of Engineers and Architects and the Federation of Swiss Architects. From 1929 to 1942 he taught as a professor for architectural theory at the ETH Zurich . He was also instrumental in founding the architecture school at the ETH Lausanne . In 1953 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lausanne .

literature

  • Laurence Béraud Tobler: Laverrière, Alphonse. In: Isabelle Rucki and Dorothee Huber (eds): Architects Lexicon of Switzerland - 19./20. Century , Basel: Birkhäuser 1998. p. 337. ISBN 3-7643-5261-2 .
  • NN: Alphonse Laverrière (Nekrolog) . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 72 , no. 20 , 1954, pp. 296 ( online ).
  • Ch. (= Charles) Thévenaz: Alphonse Laverrière (Nekrolog) . In: Bulletin technique de la Suisse romande . tape 80 , no. 8 , 1954, pp. 109 f . ( online ).

Web links

Commons : Alphonse Laverrière  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1908, memorial to Jean-Gabriel Eynard
  2. ↑ NN: The new Swiss Federal Court building in Lausanne . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 91 , no. 1 , 1928, pp. 1 ff ., doi : 10.5169 / seals-42423 .
  3. ^ A. Taverney: Le Bel-Air Métropole et la tour de neuf étages à Lausanne . In: Heimatschutz . tape 27 , no. 7 , 1933, pp. 103 ff ., doi : 10.5169 / seals-172555 .
  4. ^ Alphonse Laverrière: Immeuble Bel-Air-Métropole, Lausanne . In: Werk . tape 20 , no. 10 , 1933, pp. 289 ff ., doi : 10.5169 / seals-86423 .
  5. ^ Pierre Jacquet: Jardin botanique de Lausanne . In: Werk . tape 33 , no. 9 , 1946, pp. 311 ff ., doi : 10.5169 / seals-26355 .
  6. ↑ Alphonse Laverrière. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 26, 2007 ; Retrieved November 24, 2009 .
personal data
SURNAME Laverrière, Alphonse
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss architect
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Carouge
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1954
Place of death Lausanne