Vortrag von Anne Holtrop, anschliessend Gespräch mit Jean-Daniel Strub.

The materiality of an architectural project is often understood as its construction and expression. My own relationship with material has shifted towards the process of working a material and its specific associated gestures. This focus enables me to find form as a consequential result of intervening in the process of making.

Batara, Green Corner Building, Maison Margiela and the Art Institute are examples of works where the main focus is on altering matter in its fluid state, before it sets and hardens. The way the material flows and forms against the boundaries of sand, textile, partial form work, all become aspects that express the change of the material state, defining the form of the architecture, and unlocking new potentials and possibilities for its application. This work is achieved through continuous collaboration with craftsmen, specialists and researchers to develop these alternative methods of making.

The site of a project in turn binds material and gesture together, especially looked at from a geological perspective, by studying how the landscape is formed, what the ground consists of, and how it is changing. The exploration of the soil, sand, stone, minerals, as well as the crust, faults, cracks, hills and craters, inform material sourcing and the possibilities of building.

My interest is to gain a fundamental understanding of a territory by exploring its geological formations and its material consistence and engage in human practices that have built specific relationships with a specific place, in order to produce an architecture that is solely focused on the relationship between site, gesture and material.

Der Anlass findet auf Englisch statt.