Christian Kerez was born in 1962 in Maracaibo, Venezuela, educated at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and received a Masters in Architecture in 1988. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s he was a photographer. This work, in turn, deeply influenced his architectural approach.
He was a design architect in the office of Rudolf Fontana from 1991 to 1993. After extensive published work in the field of architectural photography, he opened his own architectural office in Zurich, Switzerland in 1993. Christian Kerez has been a visiting professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich since 2001 and has been appointed as Assistant professor in design and architecture. Further, he received the 1998 Swiss art scholarship.
Kerez has built remarkably few but exquisite buildings. His architecture has often been linked to the rawness of Konkrete Kunst (Concrete art) and to the bareness of infrastructural works for which he has an admitted fascination.
Interview by Cornelia Tapparelli. Translation by Anne Buerger. Special thanks to Franziska Wittman and Hannes Oswald from the studio of Christian Kerez. Images courtesy of Christian Kerez and Walter Mair. Animation courtesy of Frontop.
