Surface Culture
After receiving my Master's Degree at ETH Zürich, I co-founded the collective la–clique in order to explore collaborative and non-hierarchical ways of working in architecture. Public space, reuse and ephemeral structures are recurring topics among the realized projects.
Soon after, much of my time was invested in architectural photography, both for commissions and personal projects. My work has been published in various magazines and blogs, an early stage of the ongoing project WIP:PAV was exhibited at Maraichers 5 in Geneva in 2023.
In architectural photography, our built environment is mostly shown at a final and static result. Depictions of architectural history teach us about evolving styles or typologies; rarely do we reflect on the development of methods or processes which lie at the source of architectural production.
In my recent photographic works, I have focused more precisely on the acts of creation than on the built work itself.
Very close details of surfaces, elements, joints or corners point to questions like: why was this built, what resources, tools and knowledge of craftsmanship were at hand, which were the crucial factors that determined construction methods and thus form, what architectural expression results from this?
The images reveal that surface quality is a matter of culture, of knowledge and values. Architectural detail emerges both from topography and tool.
This photographic investigation dives into architectural culture, its value in historic and contemporary examples, and searches for lessons how surface influences form and perhaps typology as a whole.
The ongoing project seeks to find more exemplary constructions that reveal a precise way of conceiving and construction architecture within their material logic. Different regions have learnt a variety of ways to deal with their respective resources, which is a lesson that should be reconsidered in times of hyperavailability and generic methodologies.