KIT | Wallpaper*

(Image credit: Marc Wehrli)

Following graduation from ETH Zurich, architects Roman Loretan and Andreas Schelling worked in London and New York before returning to their native Switzerland to set up Kit with fellow ETH Zurich-alumnus Gianet Traxler in Zurich in 2009. Their single-family house in the March District in Schwyz, an exercise in maximising space while minimising footprint, is a favourite among the three partners. Their fire station design in Weinfelden ranks equally high. 'Their appearance is the result of an intense examination of the context and the users' needs,' they explain. 'Though the design appears very clear and simple, the spatial experiences are versatile.' The team's work spans many different scales, from small pavilions to larger infrastructure schemes. The firm might be young, but their efforts have already been rewarded: they won the Foundation Award for best young Swiss architects at the start of their joint career, with the March District house scooping several distinctions more recently.
www.kitarchitects.com

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).