Jacob doubt

Zurich sister tower

Residential and commercial building Seefeldstrasse Zurich

Bank building Glarus

Jakob Zweifel (born September 29, 1921 in Wil SG ; † November 27, 2010 in Zurich ) was a Swiss architect. As the founder of the Theater an der Winkelwiese, he was a patron of the arts; He was actively involved in the debate about the spatial development of Switzerland and the protection of the architectural heritage. He is one of the most important representatives of post-war modernism in Switzerland and was part of the Zurich group with Werner Frey (1912–1989), Franz Füeg (born 1921) and Jacques Schader (1917–2007).

Life

Doubt, the son of a Protestant post clerk who immigrated from the canton of Glarus, experienced on the one hand the medieval, closed beauty of the Catholic-bourgeoisie Wil, but already in childhood and youth often drove with his parents and sister to his native Glarus, to which he remained professionally connected throughout his life should. His professional interest in monument protection issues and in the construction and planning tasks in the historical stock can certainly be better appreciated under this aspect. His later art history professor, Linus Birchler , evidently actively promoted this respect for the inherited heritage. After graduating from high school in St. Gallen in 1940, both the profession of forester and a degree in acting were initially on the agenda, but he first began studying cultural and surveying technology. After the recruit school with the mountain troops , he decided to concentrate on architecture.

From 1941 he studied architecture at the ETH Zurich , where he was decisively influenced by the design professor William Dunkel , an apparently charismatic and cosmopolitan, well-traveled personality, and with whom he later became friends. The biographer of Zweifels, Martin Schlappner, describes Dunkel as a planner who developed his programs and room ideas very carefully:

“This love [for form] was fed by two basic currents of his being: by sensitivity and rationality. This placed emphasis on the fact that architecture has to develop from the resources used sparingly and their possibilities of construction. "

- Martin Schlappner

.

This attitude can almost be described as programmatic for the model of the architects from Doubt's generation, the Swiss Second Modernism , however different their design attitudes were in detail. Doubt received his diploma from Hans Hofmann in 1946 ; with an art museum that is confidently planned into the heart of Zurich. He spent three years as an assistant at the ETH, until he opened his own studio in Zurich in 1949 - another one was added later in Glarus , and from 1971 also in Lausanne .

In 1964, Zweifel founded the Theater an der Winkelwiese in Zurich with Maria von Ostfelden , which he set up at his own expense and supports the avant-garde and experimental theater. In 2004, Jakob Zweifel was awarded the gold medal of honor by the Government Council of the Canton of Zurich for his commitment. On November 18, 2006, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the ETH Zurich.

The nurses' dormitories

He also pursued the courage of his diploma draft - the new courage of his generation, who rebelled against a prevailing building consensus, which was still linked to the Heimat style, in his first major and possibly his main work: the Zurich nurses' home . This building, which is now politically correct as the University Hospital's staff high-rise, was advertised as a competition in 1952; the building site on the almost flat sun terrace of the Platte , the area behind the ETH and the university, was actually far too tight for the required program. Doubt had already been able to build a smaller dormitory at the Cantonal Hospital in Glarus three years earlier, but here, with the urban density and the great competition from the participating offices, he was not expecting any success, as he later recalled. In any case, with his draft, which was to take first place, Doubt presented a high-rise building that rose 58 instead of the permitted 48 m.

The floor plan of the building is literally divided into two parts, in which the rooms are located; the central zone with the development and common areas acts like a bracket. Vertical concrete strips structure the facade, which stretch like brackets along each room over the high-rise. The single rooms are carefully furnished; the variable interior, which was largely retained during the general renovation in 1993, was designed by Marianne Kägi (* 1931) and Fritz Maurer (* 1919).

Seefeld residential and commercial building

In the meantime, Doubt was able to erect a few more buildings and publish them in specialist journals, especially school, hospital and other public buildings. But the residential and commercial building in Zurich-Seefeld became important for his oeuvre. The precisely cut cube delimits a small inner-city park in the densely built-up area in the 19th century, it adjoins the main road without completely closing the block, yet of course it is incorporated into the urban structure. A six-storey block rises above a glazed ground floor set back from the main street, but on closer inspection it is finely divided: on the one hand into the three units per floor separated by bulkheads, on the other hand also vertically in the base, shaft and attic, as has been the case since Chicago modernism is canonical. The first floor accentuates the office use with a distinctive ribbon window. The exposed concrete supporting structure in the residential floors above is filled with a light-colored sand-lime brick. On the top floor, which offers apartments as well as spacious roof terraces, a reinforced concrete frame complements the cubic shape.

Expo 64, Lausanne

At the Swiss national exhibition Expo64 , which was held again after twenty-five years after Landi 1939 , Doubt was assigned the field and forest department. This exhibition complex, situated on Lake Geneva and overgrown like a park full of trees, was built by him with a system of tent-like units that multicellulaire scanned the terrain opened up and recalled the strong poles and stretched between them Heutücher have doubts from the traditional haymaking his childhood on knew the alpine pastures in the Glarnerland. The translucency of the tent sheets resulted in good lighting situations during the day and an impressive play of light at night. The unity of the textile covering - roof and walls were made of the same material - provided good rain protection and even ventilation like in a haystack in the mountains.

Laboratory, university and college planning

Doubt used the experience of structuralism gained at the Expo in his following larger building projects: The Center de recherches agricoles , an agricultural research center of Geigy AG near Lake Murten, with the laboratories, veterinary station and agricultural section as well as the associated administration in a principally modular in all directions An expandable system of reinforced concrete elements was set up, which consists of the basic elements column, beam, roof and could be assembled in a modular manner, but through the trough-like roof elements represented a striking silhouette in the flat moor landscape.

This structuralist approach then confronts us with the new buildings for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne in Ecublens .

Important buildings and projects

from the selected catalog raisonné (AWV) edited by Zweifel himself (with Bernhard Klein):

New buildings

• Sister building and staff houses , in Glarus , 1950–53
• Gym , Linthal , 1952–53
• Sister skyscraper , Kantonsspital, Zurich universities , 1952-59
• Single-family house , St. Gallen , 1954–56
• Cloakroom building in Gäsi , Filzbach , 1956–57
• Primary school , Netstal , 1957–59
• Residential and commercial building , Zurich-Seefeld , 1957–60
• Bergschulhaus Auen , Linthal, 1958–59
• Entrance building , Ennenda , 1960–61
• Expo 64 , national exhibition, sector "Field and Forest" in Lausanne , 1961–64 (not preserved)
• Aussiedlerhof , Bevaix, 1962–64
• Center de Recherches Agricoles (cra) , Saint-Aubin FR , 1965-69
• Primary school in Moos , Rüschlikon , 1966–71
• Terrace nurse house, Glarus Cantonal Hospital, Glarus, 1967–68
• Single-family house , Thalwil , 1962–64
• Rehalp residential development , Zurich, 1968–73
• Bank building at Gemeindehausplatz , Glarus, 1968–69 / 1978–79
• Ecole Polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) , Ecublens VD , structure plan 1971, realization 1972–82
• Unteraffoltern III housing estate , Zurich, 1976–82
• Eye and ORL Clinic at Zurich University Hospital , Zurich, 1980–93

Local planning and renovations in the historical inventory

• Local planning Glarus , Glarus, 1954–56; 1979-86
• Local planning Schwanden , Schwanden , 1955
• Restoration of the tithe barn , installation of a canteen, Rikon , 1960–61
• Theater an der Winkelwiese , conversion of the basement of the Villa Tobler, 1964

literature

• Jürgen Joedicke, Martin Schlappner: Jakob Zweifel, architect. Second generation of Swiss modernism , Müller, Lars, Publishers 1996, ISBN 3-906700-40-2
• Walter Zschokke , Michael Hanak (ed.): Post-war modernity in Switzerland. Architecture by Werner Frey, Franz Füeg, Jacques Schader, Jakob Zweifel , Birkhäuser 2001, ISBN 3-7643-6638-9

Web links

Commons : Jakob Zweifel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Vanessa Giannò Talamona: Doubt, Jacob. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Literature by and about Jakob Zweifel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Interview with Jakob Zweifel (pdf)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See the interview with Rahel Hartmann Schweizer, in: tec21 , Verlags-AG der ATV, Zurich 2004 No. 47
2. ^ Martin Schlappner, in: Joedicke / Schlappner p. 121
3. ↑ see Walter Zschokke and Michael Hanack: A current of post-war modernity with the eyes of today , in: Zschokke / Hanack, p. 6
4. ↑ At the sister house in Zurich (1956–59, ed.), I also thought that we had no chance anyway, and after the competition had been submitted, I invited the office to dinner and said to the staff: ‹After the jury's decision, we’re going with hanging heads anyway around. We can't get away with this high-rise, but we're convinced, and that's why we're doing it. › In: tec21, 2004/47
5. ↑ According to the specifications of the chief architect Alberto Camenzind , who did not want to orientate himself either on the traditional structures of individual pavilions or of monumental buildings from previous world and state exhibitions. Inge Beckel. In: Post-War Modern Switzerland, p. 49
6. ↑ "The design is determined by the elements of the building structure: the roof shells, which act as defining forms, which in turn determine the direction of the light inside, and the strong protrusions of these roof shells and the twin beams that support them" Martin Schlappner. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung July 19, 1970 p. 27
7. ↑ Zweifel / Klein: Selected Catalog of Works, in: Joedicke / Schlappner p. 151 ff. (75 works)