Zaha Hadid et cetera

Architects often proclaim that they do not build their buildings on a certain location, but that they actually ?build the place?. Such statements, which are to be found in this wording or in similar equivalent variations in concise comments regarding work philosophies, oscillate somewhere between wise insight and meaningless platitude. As the latter they would deliver enough material for an entertaining squib. On the other hand, one can also approach the statement with due seriousness. It can be said with certainty, though, that every building is built in a place and thereby changes it. Inevitably the program, terrain and context, proportion and design of a structure contract new relationships with the environment. Whether the possibly existing power of an autonomous structure initiates the much-beseeched dialogue with its environment is a different question. In the face of fraying city edges, a sometimes thoughtless manner of refurbishing inner city zones, the often presumptuous appearance of arbitrary office building architectures, but also with regard to the monotony of one-family houses digging into the landscape inexorably, a contextual architecture which is able to communicate at multiple levels is in demand. Architecture should not only act and react but interact concretely with the location and its history, promising permanence and creating identity. To build a place always also implicates the claim of building the place for the people. It is them who perceive the place, it is them who live there and adopt it. Seen from this point of view, analysing, understanding and incorporating the location in the architectural concept belong to the noble duties of all architects who demand high standards of themselves and their work. With this accomplishment they equally prove themselves as philanthropists, service providers and artists. The deepened dialogue with the location is a common trait of the structures presented in this issue: Zaha Hadids Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg is an experimental landscape with a sometimes self-referential character, at the same time open and contained, a complex, new place, which reminds of Ken Adams fantasies for James Bond movies. With the new headquarters of IBM Switzerland, Max Dudler has positioned a new landmark at the fringe of Zurich, which responds to the crude environment with high quality, and, on this location, simultaneously must be considered a reference for the future consolidation of the metropolitan structure. Andrea Bassi took a different approach with his newly built school in the middle of the city of Geneva. Expertly designed outside spaces, abundant transparency and permeability, and an outside as well as volumetric interlocking formally and socially integrate the building into the existing metropolitan structure. Boegli Kramp Architects erected their huge learning machine at the edge of the small city of Payerne. Here, formerly dominated by meadows, we now encounter a built location with numerous references to the landscape and the town. A bridge builder is confronted with the challenge of creating a connection between two places. The master reveals himself by creating a truly new place through construction, materials and impression, as in the breathtaking Traversina Bridge by Conzett Bronzini Gartman.

The editors