Hilarius Knobel

Hilarius Knobel (born February 4, 1830 in Schwändi ; † February 25, 1891 in Zurich ) was a Swiss architect .

Career

Knobel was born in Schwändi in 1830 as the son of the master carpenter Hilarius Knobel and Anna Maria Marti (⚭ 1853). He worked as an architect first in Glarus and from 1859 in Zurich. Until 1862 he worked at Ferdinand Stadler, he made his own .

Knobel built

• Villas and stately homes in the Neo-Renaissance style in the canton of Glarus (Netstal, Betschwanden, Glarus, Schwanden) and in Vorarlberg (Feldkirch, Kennelbach)
• School buildings in the city of Zurich (Aussersihl, Wiedikon, Oberstrass) and in Wangen (SZ) as well
• Factory building in Ennenda, Ziegelbrücke, Mels and Vorarlberg (Nenzing, Telfs).

Alongside Bernhard Simon , Knobel is considered one of the most important Glarus architects of the 19th century.

Next Generation

His son Hilarius Knobel (* 1854 Glarus; † 1921 Zurich) continued the tradition. Together with Carl Arnold Séquin , he formed the Séquin & Knobel office around 1895 , and the two subsequently planned over 250 factories in Germany and abroad. The alternation between brick and natural stone and the contrasting use of yellow and red bricks are design elements that are also characteristic of later buildings by Hilarius Knobel.

Selected Works

Kosthaus in Triesen

Kosthaus in Triesen and Ziegelbrücke

In 1873 the cotton manufacturer Caspar Jenny, who was already active in Triesen, acquired a plot of land south of the factory. In the same year he had a workers' dwelling, the so-called "Kosthaus", built on this, according to Hilarius Knobel's plans. The workers' house is considered to be the oldest surviving multi-family building in Liechtenstein and for a long time was the largest house in the country. The tenement-like, four-storey building consists of two eight-family houses that are built together and offer space for 16 families.

Each of the residential units has a living room, a kitchen and two bedrooms. As with almost all workers' houses, a vegetable garden for self-sufficiency is an important part of the system. After a thorough renovation (architect Urs Hüssy ), this building was reopened as a day care center in November 2009.

Knobel built the “Old Kosthaus” in Ziegelbrücke as early as 1861 for the same client Jenny , which can be seen as the predecessor of the “Kosthaus” in Triesen.

Villa Getzner in Feldkirch

Villa Getzner in Feldkirch

This sandstone villa with coach house and servants' house was built in 1882 according to the plans of Hilarius Knobel. The building is a historical monument.

Factory lock of the Jenny & Schindler cotton mill in Telfs in Tyrol

Completion in 1889 with 39,000 spindles

literature

• M. Getzner: On the building history of manufacturers' villas in the 19th century using the example of Villa Getzner in Feldkirch. In: Industriearchäologie, ed. by C. Bertsch, 1992, pp. 97-113