Et cetera issues are virtually predestined to reflect the multifarious character of architecture and its contexts, to explore its range and lure the reader into unexpected realms. In this number we shall confront art and building, building-art, in its clear primary form with the fringe zones of the discipline and our awareness of it. The borders are fluid. High-quality architecture is always art, and it is particularly convincing when no attempt is made to draw attention to this fact, when its artistic claims are not an alibi and an opportunistic concession to a zeitgeist addicted to a particular life style and a spectacular effect. Inherently, architecture's impact is direct and immediate, and this makes any attempt at an indirect approach a particular challenge, as here in a magazine that communicates through words and pictures - an art and a craft at one and the same time, if both are successful. Architecture, art and criticism, close and eternally problematic neighbours, experience blessed moments when the question of the primacy of art does not arise, the creative element is equally as convincing in the portrayal and the object portrayed, and the frontiers between them are expunged. Simon Baur pursues the work of the artist Ursula Mumenthaler who, in her own way and with her own means, plays an ingenious game, hard on the heels of architecture, surprising, irritating and outwitting our familiar perception of three-dimensionality: a frontier-crossing sortie. Peter Märkli, an architect, designed a new organ for Basel Cathedral, overstepping the familiar limits of the discipline - architecture: an instrument, an item of furniture? Axel Simon reports and looks for answers. Martin Tschanz's contribution provides food for thought in connection with frontiers and exclusion, imprisonment and prison architecture and discusses the institution of the prison - a socially founded and legally legitimised perversion of housing and thus a morally and architecturally complex task for architects. With eloquence, profundity and clarity, Martin Steinmann discusses the architecture of a new school by Christian Kerez: a surprising design, created symbolically „out of necessity“, self-evident, natural and light-hearted. In the little library by Devanthéry and Lamunière in Lausanne, image and construction merge to form one unified whole. Joseph Abram investigates the symbolic character of this strongly pictorial architecture, whose weightlessly floating volumes sanctify the students' hours of study and reading and provide them with a privileged ambience. An et cetera issue of a special kind in which frontiers and questions of perception play a special role. The Editors

Thema

Philipp Esch
Farbe vollfett | Erweiterung Schulhaus Scherr von Patrick Gmür Architekten

Martin Steinmann
Was bedeutet es, wenn Stützen schräg sind? |Schulhaus in Eschenbach SG von Christian Kerez

Axel Simon
Möbel, Werkzeug, Architektur | Die neue Orgel des Basler Münsters von Peter Märkli und Mathis Orgelbau

Simon Baur
Fotografische Konstruktionen | Eine Annäherung an die Arbeit von Ursula Mumenthaler

Joseph Abram
Bild und Tektonik | Bibliothek Edouard Fleuret von Devanthéry & Lamunière mit de Freudenreich

Martin Tschanz
Gefängnisarchitektur und ihre Aufgaben

Forum

Kolumne: Ruth Schweikert
Wettbewerb: Wohnsiedlungen Zürich
Wettbewerb: Weihnachtsbeleuchtung Zürich
Bauten: Alpinarium Galtür
Ausbildung: Architektur in der Schule
Ausstellung: Peter Heman
Ausstellung: Paul Schmitthenner
Bücher: Heinz Hossdorf
bauen + rechten
Architekturausstellungen | Neuerscheinungen | Wettbewerbe
Veranstaltungen | Firmennachrichten
Vorschau | Impressum

werk-Material

Aschwanden Schürer Architekten AG, Zürich:
Ausbau und Erneuerung Strafanstalt Saxerriet, Salez SG

Arbeitsgemeinschaft Silva Ruoss und Alex Maciéczyk, Zürich:
Kantonale Strafanstalt An der Aa, Zug ZG