Claude Schnaidt

Claude Méril Schnaidt (born June 23, 1931 in Geneva ; † March 22, 2007 in Paris ) was a Swiss - French architect and architectural theorist .

Life

Claude Schnaidt was a student of Max Bill . He taught at the Ulm School of Design , at the Institut de l'Environnement in Paris and at the Unité pédagogique d'architecture no.1 (UPA 1) in Paris as well as at the successor university, École d'Architecture Paris-Villemin (EAPV, today part of) the École nationale supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Val de Seine). He was a founding member of the Bauhaus Dessau Association , which later became the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation . He was a Marxist and a member of the Parti communiste français .

Schnaidt studied from 1946 to 1953 at the École des Arts et Métiers in Geneva and at the Université de Genève architecture. During this time he worked in two Geneva architecture firms and, in 1954, with Max Bill in Zurich and Ulm . From 1954 to 1958 he continued his studies at the Ulm School of Design , where he graduated in 1958. As an employee of the Institute for Industrialized Building at the HfG, he realized a number of projects and, as a professor at the university, took over the development of teaching programs in the building department from 1962. From 1966 until the dissolution of the university in 1968 he headed the building department and was vice rector of the university in 1967 and 1968.

From 1968 to 1971 Schnaidt played a key role in setting up the Institut de l'Environnement in Paris, supported by the French Ministry of Culture. This was canceled in 1971, after which Schnaidt took over a professorship at the Unité pédagogique d'architecture no.1, later the École d'architecture Paris-Villemin, which he held until the mid-1990s. As part of the IE and the UPA / EAPV, he further developed his focus on industrialized construction and functionalism , which go back to his work at the Ulm School of Design. After working as an advisor for the Warsaw Office for Typification of Urban Buildings or for the European Economic Commission of the United Nations during his time in Ulm , he increasingly focused on the development of teaching in Paris, within the framework of UNESCO at the beginning of the 1970s. Years, for example, regarding the reform or establishment of architectural education in North and West Africa.

Numerous lectures and publications on the tradition of new building , on industrial building, industrial design and on political issues in connection with the closure of the Bauhaus Dessau in 1932/33 and the "repetition" of the closure of the Ulm School of Education in 1968 allow a committed advocate of modernity to emerge strongly incorporated social issues into his perspective. Schnaidt's political stance - he was a member of the Parti communiste français for decades and until his death - and his interest in industrial construction and collective living had been associated with East Germany ( GDR ) since the early 1960s , especially with the School of Architecture and Bauwesen Weimar in Weimar , which he tried to bring into a cooperation with Bernd Grönwald with the EAPV in the 1980s . His lively publication activity in form + Zweck ( Berlin ) and the scientific journal of the HAB Weimar also document his exchange across the Wall. As a founding member of the association and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, he continued to cultivate the contacts established after 1990. The turn to Cuba , namely his seminars at the Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverría (ISPJAE, today CUJAE) in Havana at the end of his teaching activity, manifested the continuity of his thinking and working after the collapse of the Eastern bloc .

In the last years of his life he turned to the artistic work together with his wife Odette Cafarelli . The collages, décollages and permutations, based on the “cultural waste” of advertising posters, were exhibited on various occasions from 2000 to 2006, including in 2004 in the Mies van der Rohe house in Berlin.

Claude Schnaidt was married to Barbara Michejda , Jeanne Bracco and Odette Cafarelli .

Works

• Ulm: University of Design. Catalog of a traveling exhibition , Ulm 1963 (with Herbert Lindinger). Second edition under the title Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm , Munich 1964. Third edition under the title Hogeschool voor vormgeving Ulm , Amsterdam 1965
• Hannes Meyer: Projects, Buildings and Writings , Teufen 1965 (with English translation. Spanish translation under the title Introducción a Hannes Meyer , in: Boletin de la Escuela de arquitectura , La Habana 1966.)
• L'âge de la pierre , Paris 1980. Comprehensive German translation under the title Die Stein-Zeit , in: tendenzen , Munich (1981) 134, pp. 6-14
• Environmental citizens and environmental makers. Writings 1964-1980. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1982 ( Fundus series 83/84)
• Ce n'est pas fini / No se acabó , Paris / La Habana 1999 (with Spanish translation)
• Autrement dit: Ecrits 1950–2001 , Paris 2004
• In other words. Writings 1950-2001 (German translation of Autrement dit: Ecrits 1950-2001 ), Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-86068-373-6

Web links

• Claude Schnaidt's estate at the gta archive
• Claude Schnaidt, Fragments to Think Modern: The Anciens and the Moderns, in: Form + Zweck online (accessed on March 28, 2011)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Bernd Grönwald: Laudation for Claude Schnaidt on the honorary doctorate at the HAB Weimar on May 27th, 1983 . In: Scientific journal of the HAB Weimar 31st vol., Issue 2 Series A, 1985, p. 72