Extension Zurich Stadelhofen station, 2019—2035, competition, 1. Prize. Photo: maaars
INTERACTING CONSTELLATIONS Zurich-based Giuliani Hönger Architekten like to compare their projects to a unique, tailor-cut suit, in both the place those projects end up, and their future usage. TEXT: CORNELIA BRELOWSKI | PHOTOS: DAVID WILLEN
Based on the idea of the ‘evolving city’, Giuliani Hönger design reacts to the urban environment and the existing proportions (‘genius loci’), by either acknowledging or challenging them. An open mind is adopted from the beginning – therefore the architects and their team act on the combined principles of an open approach and multiple interpretations. IDENTITY-FORMING QUALITY ‘Powerful spaces’, to Giuliani Hönger Architekten, are public interiors with a specific quality of form language that create an identity and offer a relationship to future users. The main design instrument to facilitate this is the section, correlating with the primary structure and always developed in close cooperation with the engineering team. 74 | Issue 88 | December 2021
As our times ask for a new interpretation of architecture, their answer can for example be a modern shell with state-of-the-art, climate-friendly technology, or a conserved building, supplemented with a new, cut to measure interior reflecting its future usage. GUIDING PRINCIPLES Lorenzo Giuliani and Christian Hönger discovered their matching interests and approach during the early ‘90s while co-working for Ernst Studer, who held a professorship for design at the ETH Zurich at the time. They have since worked on further evolving the principles of ‘ambiguous typology’ and ‘powerful spaces’ for both their own projects and their teaching. These two guiding aspects function as deal-breakers for design decisions, always tak-
The new University of Applied Sciences Sihlhof, Zürich, 1999—2003, competition, 1. Prize. Photo: Walter Mair
