Rudolf Gaberel

Davos Platz station, a late work from 1946

Rudolf Gaberel (born July 15, 1882 in Bern ; † August 1, 1963 in Minusio ) was a Swiss architect who worked in Davos from 1906 until after the Second World War , where he was responsible for important modern buildings, especially in the 1920s and 1930s how the Clavadel Clinic created.

education

Gaberel's youth and education were strongly influenced by his tuberculosis disease. The son of the Bern calibration master, cantonal inspector for weight and mass Arnold Gaberel, had to interrupt the secondary school due to illness in 1899 at the age of 17. After a six-month apprenticeship as a carpenter, he began studying architecture at the Burgdorf technical center , and in 1901 switched to training with the architect Eugen Stettler , during which he also took courses at the arts and crafts school. In 1903 he was able to resume studies, but without a degree, as the doctors prescribed him a cure in Italy in October. He used the time in Pisa with art-historical studies, excursions went to Viareggio, Livorno, Volterra, Lucca, San Gimignano and other places in Tuscany. It was there that he met the German poet and art historian Rudolf Borchardt , a friendship that shaped him. Since there was no improvement in his illness, he went to Davos in 1904 on the advice of doctors, which was to remain the center of his life for five decades.

Employment

From 1906 he was able to take up a job as a design architect for the Gaudenz Issler chalet factory . The designs at that time are committed to a Bündner Heimatstil. Works from this period include the Freemason Lodge Humanitas in Davos Platz from 1907 and the Villa Cembra in Davos Dorf two years later.

The forest cemetery in an artistic interpretation by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , 1933

In 1909 Gaberel married his wife Rosa and moved into their own house in Davos. In 1914, a few months before the outbreak of World War I , he founded his own office together with Jacob Liedemann from Wiesbaden. The partnership was very short, however, as Liedemann took part in the war and fell in 1917. The beginning of the office was economically difficult, Gaberel mainly dealt with renovations. The competition win for a parish hall on Berglistutz in 1917 was never realized due to lack of money. Nevertheless, at the end of the 1950s, Gaberel put this design at the beginning of his work in his list of works for the Swiss artist lexicon.

The first major project in his own office was the Davos Forest Cemetery in 1920 , a loosely arranged ensemble on an elliptical floor plan in an existing larch forest on the island-like area of ​​the Wildboden.

Gaberel had come to an up-and-coming town, the importance of which had been a health resort for tuberculosis sufferers since the mid-19th century. Around 1900, through the initiatives of Willem Jan Holsboer and Karl Turbans , Davos had become a European center of high altitude cures and was described by Oswald Peters as “a hospital, as a large hospital complex”, whose numerous sanatoriums have been architecturally influenced by the strict hygiene requirements since the 1870s typical local Davos flat roof as well as the verandas dominating the entire southern fronts, which were required for the lying cures . These peculiarities of Davos (sanatorium) architecture were particularly interesting and connectable for the representatives of New Building .

From the 1920s Gaberel planned a series of hotel and sanatorium conversions and new buildings in line with these criteria, i.e. with a flat roof, wide balconies in front of the new building, in addition to the conversion of the Villa Sophia and the German sanatorium in Davos. Wolfgang above all the sanatorium of the Zürcher Heilstätte in Davos-Clavadel, built in the early 1930s.

As a result of the economic crisis, Gaberel built some of his buildings, such as the school in Davos-Frauenkirch , out of wood and, like Paul Artaria in Basel and Hans Fischli in Zurich, developed wood construction.

Works (selection)

• Waldfriedhof , Davos-Frauenkirch 1919-20 (with Christian Issler and Erwin Friedrich Baumann )
• City hall renovation , Davos 1926
• Burckhardt doctor's house , Davos 1926
• German sanatorium , Davos-Wolfgang 1927
• Village garage , Davos 1927–28
• Zürcher Heilstätte , Davos-Clavadel 1927–28
• Ice rink house , Davos 1933
• Doctor's house on the Grüeni , Davos 1934
• Schoolhouse , Davos-Frauenkirch 1936
• Cantonal Hospital , Chur 1941 (with FG Brun)
• Railway station , Davos-Platz 1949 (with)

literature

• Erhard Branger: Rudolf Gaberel . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 81 , no. 35 , 1963, pp. 626 f . ( e-periodica.ch ).
• Elisabeth Ellenberger: Rudolf Gaberel. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . May 11, 2005 , accessed January 25, 2020 .
• Kristof Kübler: Against the hermetic magic - Rudolf Gaberel and Davos: Rationalistic renewal of alpine architecture around 1930. Verlag Bündner Monatsblatt, Chur 1997. ISBN 3-905241-69-2
• Kristof Kübler: Gaberel, Rudolf. In: Isabelle Rucki and Dorothee Huber (eds.): Architectural Lexicon of Switzerland - 19./20. Century. Birkhäuser, Basel 1998, p. 199 f. ISBN 3-7643-5261-2

Web links

• Rudolf Gaberel. In: arch INFORM .

supporting documents

1. ↑ Scalettastr. 7, Inventory of Newer Swiss Architecture Volume 3: Biel, Chur, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Davos. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1982. p. 439 ISBN 3-280-01397-6
2. ↑ Salzgäbastr. 1, Inventory of Newer Swiss Architecture Volume 3: Biel, Chur, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Davos. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1982. p. 440 ISBN 3-280-01397-6 .
3. ↑ Competition for a rectory in Davos . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 70 , no. 25 , 1917, pp. 286–289 ( e-periodica.ch ).
4. ↑ The new forest cemetery in Davos . In: The work . tape 9 , no. 7 , 1922, pp. 133–136 as well as some illustrations in the booklet , doi : 10.5169 / seals-10631 .
5. ^ Oscar Peter, Wilhelm Hauri: Davos. For orientation for doctors and the sick. Hugo Richter Verlagsbuchhandlung, Davos 1893. Quoted from: Hanspeter Rebsamen, Werner Stutz: The rise of Davos. In: INSA (Inventory of Newer Swiss Architecture, 1850–1920). Vol. 3: Davos. Orell-Füssli: Zurich 1982. p. 348
6. ↑ The wood-cement roof spread rapidly in Graubünden since the 1860s, see: Georg Lasius : Die Holz-Cement-Dachung: Lecture . In: The Railway . tape 6 , no. 5 , 1877, p. 38 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-5669 .
7. ↑ Erwin Poeschel : The flat roof in Davos . In: The work . tape 15 , no. 4 , 1928, pp. 102-108 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-15161 .
8. ↑ NN: Davos buildings by Arch. Rudolf Gaberel . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 100 , no. 8 , 1932, p. 105–111 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-45545 .
9. ↑ Erwin Poeschel: The surgical clinic of the Zürcher Heilstätte in Clavadel, Davos: Architect Rudolf Gaberel . In: Werk . tape 23 , no. 1 , 1936, pp. 9-16 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-19890 .