Frei + Saarinen Architekten

Frei + Saarinen Architekten

Switzerland

View more work

Back to group shot

 
PROFILE

Barbara Frei and Martin Saarinen had worked in well-known practices like NL Architects, Sadar Vuga, Erick van Egeraat and Herzog & de Meuron before setting up their joint firm in Zurich in 2005. Both graduates of ETH Zurich, the architects state that while they do not prefer to use the word ‘inspiration’ for their work, ‘the list of practices and works that we admire is long. “Nomen Est Omen” (“name is omen”) suggests similarities to Frei Otto’s or Eero Saarinen’s work. A nice thought…’ Using new technologies only if they contribute to an architectural idea, the architects do not share many of their colleagues’ fascination with digital technologies as a means in itself, preferring to allow their work to be influenced by the social changes.

Rural House

Inspired by the brief’s requirement for a ‘standalone house in a rural location’ Frei and Saarinen reference Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda and chose to work on a farmhouse including 11 cows and confront the challenges and the ‘spatial and atmospheric potential of sharing a house with farm animals.’ Integrating the animals’ presence in the house design, they used the cows’ body warmth to help heat up the rooms. The house was seen as ‘a domesticated piece of nature’, working to reinforce the inhabitants’ natural experience but also, in a way, an art piece. ‘By putting the fully glazed stables on a socle, like Damian Hirst's Golden Calf, the relation of watching and being watched is shifted’, they explain, adding, in a deadpan way that ‘in fact, the inhabitants work as entertainment for the cows.’


http://www.freisaarinen.ch

Google Earth

Tour all of our featured buildings in 3D using Google Earth

Download all files for our 2010 Architect directory

Get Google Earth