Jean Tschumi

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Mutuelle Assurance Vaudoise lobby
Nestlé headquarters in Vevey

Jean Tschumi (born February 14, 1904 in Plainpalais ; † January 25, 1962 ) was a Swiss architect and professor at the ETH Lausanne .

career

After an apprenticeship as a draftsman in Lausanne, he attended the Technikum Biel to study decorating , then from 1922 he continued his studies of architecture and urban planning at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts and at the Institut d'Urbanisme of the Paris University. In 1927 he began his career - because of his decorative talent - in the studio of the Parisian decorator and interior designer Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann . There he designed, for example, the cabin furniture for the transatlantic liner Normandie .

At the same time, however, he was already turning to urban planning; In 1932 he was awarded the third prize in the great urban expansion of Lausanne, and in 1937 he received the Grand Prize of the City of Paris for the planning of underground traffic management. In 1943 he was appointed head of the newly founded École d'architecture et d'Urbanisme in Lausanne.

It was only from this point in time that he created his architectural work - relatively narrow but consisting of significant buildings - in his own office. Following orders for Sandoz in France, he succeeded in creating emblematic designs for the headquarters of the Mutuelle Vaudoise insurance company and the Silo in Renens, which took into account the client's need for representation as well as functional aspects.

His work, which has received the Reynolds Prize and was recognized worldwide, is the Nestlé headquarters in Vevey , a Y-shaped administration building, raised on Pilotis , it is the appropriate representative of the company, which is still perceived as contemporary today. The last building he planned, the palace for the United Nations Health Organization , was erected posthumously under the direction of Pierre Bonnard .

Tschumi participated in various bodies, commissions, professional associations and juries; 1953-57 he held the chairmanship of the International Union of Architects.

Tschumi, who divided his time and work between Lausanne and Paris, where he had offices in each case, died in the sleeping car on the Paris-Lausanne express train. Jean Tschumi is the father of Bernard Tschumi .

Appreciation

“... the astonishing lifespan of the functions and finally a talent to translate the representative and symbolic content of the institutions and companies hosted into forms: all of this is Jean Tschumi's very personal language, constantly on the lookout for a post-war modernity as well as a strangely current one contemporary. Here and there elegance is combined with a concept of weightlessness ...
that this work knows how to play between classic and modern, to unite them: between magnificent materials polished with the sensitivity of the craftsman and industrial products made far from the construction site; between technical "handicrafts" and the use of highly developed technology and statics. "

Tschumi's buildings appear astonishingly contemporary, both in the three-dimensional shaping of the components and the use of the materials.

Works (in selection)

  • Pavillon Suisse for the Exposition internationale de l'urbanisme et l'habitation , Paris, 1947.
  • Sandoz factory building for dyes , in Noisy-le-Sec, France, 1947–53.
  • Pharmaceutical laboratories at Sandoz, Orléans, France, 1949-53.
  • Mutuelle Vaudoise Assurance , Lausanne, 1952–56.
  • Production building for chemical products of the Sandoz company, in Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne, France, 1952–61.
  • Silo of the USAR , Renens, 1957–59, significantly changed by extension
  • Nestlé Headquarters , Vevey, 1959–60.
  • Administration building for Nestlé Sopad , with A. Aubert , Courbevoie, Paris, 1961.
  • Auditorium of the Lausanne Polytechnic , Lausanne, 1957–62.
  • Administrative headquarters of André & Cie , Lausanne, 1962.
  • WHO headquarters , Geneva, 1962–66, with Pierre Bonnard (posthumous)

literature

  • Isabelle Rucki and Dorothee Huber (eds): Architectural Lexicon of Switzerland - 19./20. Century Basel: Birkhäuser 1998. ISBN 3-7643-5261-2 .
  • Jacques Gubler: Jean Tschumi, album: à l'occasion de l'exposition des dessins de Jean Tschumi à l'aula de l'École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . Genève: Librairie d'Architecture et Beaux-Arts 1988. or ISBN
  • Jean Tschumi. Faces: journal d'architectures. No. 39 Geneva, École d'Architecture de l'Université de Genève 1996 ISSN  0258-6800

proof

  1. ^ Jean Tschumi: Bâtiment administratif de la Mutuelle Vaudoise Accidents, Lausanne . In: The work . tape 47 , no. 2 , 1960, p. 52 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-34138 .
  2. ^ Jean Tschumi: Silo à Lausanne-Renens . In: The work . tape 44 , no. 2 , 1957, p. 82 ff ., doi : 10.5169 / seals-36706 .
  3. ↑ Inès Lamunière, Patrick Devanthéry: Jean Tschumi's oeuvre: A review. In Faces: journal d'architectures. No. 39 _S.I Geneva, École d'Architecture de l'Université de Genève 1996 ISSN  0258-6800

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Tschumi, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss architect
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Plain Palace
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1962