A magnificent book on a key design by Lux Guyer, Switzerland's first independent female architect, documenting its exemplary restoration and adaptation to today's demands by Swiss architects Christ & Gantenbein and Sven Richter.
Lux Guyer (1894-1955) was the first female architect to establish her own studio in Switzerland in 1924. One of her key designs is the Obere Schiedhalde, a single-family home above Küsnacht near Zurich. Completed in 1929 and temporarily occupied by Guyer and her family themselves, it is a variation on her legendary SAFFA-Haus of 1928. Between 2012 and 2018, the building itself as well as the surrounding garden were extensively and carefully restored by Basel-based architecture firm Christ & Gantenbein together with Sven Richter, co-founder of Richter Tobler Architects in Basel. Working in close collaboration with the Canton of Zurich's office for the preservation of historic monuments, they also called in experts for a historically conscious overhaul of the building's interior design, color scheme, furniture, and garden design.
Together with the current owners, the architects made it their mission to not only preserve this significant architectural monument of Swiss Modernism, but also make it accessible to the public through this book. Conceived by graphic designers Ludovic Balland and Annina Schepping, it offers an in-depth documentation of the renovated Obere Schiedhalde. Some 200 photographs of the house, garden, interior details, and furniture, as well as historic and newly drawn plans are supplemented with texts in German and English that tell the story of the building and the entire undertaking of its restoration.
«Die Gestaltung des Bandes ist besonders attraktiv, denn die Teilaspekten gewidmeten Kapitel konturieren den zeitlosen Charakter des Baus und machen die Verwobenheit des Ganzen im einzelnen erfahrbar. Vor allem aber dokumentiert die überfällige Publikation Seite um Seite den Esprit und den Erfindungsreichtum Lux Guyers, der nun, mehr als 100 Jahre später, in seinem unprätentiösen Wohlklang endlich erneut zur Geltung kommt.» Vojin Sasa Vukadinovic,
Schweizer Monat
«Die Freude an der Weiterentwicklung des Bestands ist auf jeder Seite des Buchs deutlich spürbar und vermag auch interessierte Laien für das architektonische Juwel am Zürichsee zu begeistern.» Leonie Singer,
TEC21
