Trix & Robert Haussmann: The Log-O-Rithmic Slide Rule / Alberto Ponis: Drawing Landscape

Trix & Robert Haussmann
The Log-O-Rithmic Slide Rule

A retrospective with interventions by Caruso St John Architects, Liam Gillick and Karl Holmqvist. Curated by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen, gta Exhibitions, ETH Zurich, with a contribution by Sabine Sträuli (gta Archives, ETH Zurich). A collaboration with the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Nottingham Contemporary.

Trix and Robert Haussmann can be counted among the most important Swiss architects of the 20th century. Their multifaceted practice ranges from architecture to product design, furniture, and textiles—each of which make use of creative plays on form, function, and language. Since founding their studio in 1967, which they later called “Allgemeine Entwurfsanstalt Zürich” (General Design Institute Zurich), Trix and Robert Haussmann were amongst the first to break with the premises of modern canonical orders and concepts, playfully reinterpreting the linguistic dogmas of architecture theories.

To combat the conformist impoverishment of expression in their time, the duo developed an experimental design instrument called The Log-O-Rithmic Slide Rule. Like a slide-ruler, this “concept-slider” makes use of the combinatorial potential of moving two scales against one another. In Trix and Robert Haussmann’s adaptation of the instrument, however, words—predominately adjectives used in architectural discourse—replace numerals, which, through endless combinations, produce imaginative architectures, languages, and images. The Oulipo-inspired concept-slider was intended to expand on prevailing notions of stylistic diversity with the use of randomly combined pairs of words.

For Trix and Robert Haussmann conceptual works are always tools in the design process for concrete projects. Therefore, in addition to architectural designs and models, the exhibition also presents realized projects like the arcades of Boutique Weinberg, sculptural objects that find themselves between art and design, as well as mirror-objects, that confound one’s perception of the exhibition space through illusionistic distortions.

Supported by Tisca Tischhauser AG, Vitra Design Foundation, ProHelvetia, Peter Röthlisberger, Herald St, London, Teo Jakob Art Collection Foundation and Caruso St John Architects.


Alberto Ponis
Drawing Landscape

“I’ve designed more than 300 houses, and none of them was presented to me in a ‘do it any way you like’ commission. And no single project was the same. The clients each responded in different ways. Frankly, some of them were more interesting than others. But I made sure I looked after all of them and considered every detail of their houses. For example, in each of the hundreds of bathrooms I have designed I think carefully where to place the tub. I find a place for everything. Which means for 40 bloody years or so I’ve been here all winter designing houses that people will use in the summer. The huge amount of work this requires means that I have a great difficulty thinking of them in any other way than physically.” 

Alberto Ponis holds a unique position in contemporary Italian architecture. Born in Genoa in 1933, he studied at the Florence School of architecture. In the early 1960s he worked in London for Ernő Goldfinger, and later for Denys Lasdun. In 1963 Ponis was invited to design his first project in Porto Rafael and began an uninterrupted period of building activity that has resulted in the realisation of more than 300 houses in the north eastern corner of Sardinia.

The majority of the projects built by Ponis are in Sardinia, but it would be inaccurate to characterise him as a “local architect.” His is a world-view and his projects are rooted in a wider understanding of architectural culture. What makes Ponis’ work remarkable is his extreme sensitivity to the circumstances of place, to topography, geology and landscape. While his position is ultimately a modernist one, it can also be understood to fulfil the criteria defined by Kenneth Frampton as a Critical Regional one.

For the first time drawings from Alberto Ponis’ archive will be on display in an exhibition dedicated to his work, many of which interpret the unique circumstances of a project and the delicate act of placing a house in a landscape. Invariably Ponis’ drawings are produced by hand in pencil and ink, and this charges them with a sense of doubt. They explicitly question the relationships the architect seeks to establish between a built edifice and the rocks, vegetation and existing man-made elements that surround it. In addition to the drawings, photographs by Gion von Albertini, whose extensive documentation of Ponis’ houses has never been exhibited before, will be featured in the show.

Curated by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen in collaboration with Irina Davidovici, Jonathan Sergison and Gion von Albertini.