First UK Survey of the Work of Swiss Architects and Designers Trix & Robert Haussmann
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Nottingham Contemporary has announced the first UK retrospective of Trix & Robert Haussmann — two of the most significant and intriguing Swiss architects and designers of the 20th century. The exhibition celebrates the duo’s playful innovations, conceFirst UK Survey of the Work of Swiss Architects and Designers Trix & Robert Haussmann
Nottingham Contemporary has announced the first UK retrospective of Trix & Robert Haussmann — two of the most significant and intriguing Swiss architects and designers of the 20th century. The exhibition celebrates the duo’s playful innovations, concerning illusion and ambiguity.“Blending diverse influences, from pop culture to 16th century styles, their work spans architecture, product design, installation, furniture and textiles. The exhibition brings together works from the last 50 years, such as adapted chairs from the 1960s, with maquettes, fragmented neoclassical pillars and recent mirrored works,” the museum says.The exhibition design has been conceived by Caruso St John Architects — architects of Nottingham Contemporary’s RIBA Award-winning building, and includes interventions by artists Liam Gillick and Karl Holmqvist, and Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse.The exhibition is curated by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen (gta exhibitions, ETH Zurich), with a contribution from Sabine Strauli (gta archives, ETH Zurich). It is designed and supported by Caruso St John Architects, and is a collaboration with KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and with the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich.Trix and Robert Haussmann may be counted among the most important Swiss architects of the 20th century.Both architects have impressive roots in modern architecture.Robert Haussmann (1931) studied under architecture greats Johannes Itten, Gerrit Rietveld, and Willy Guhl; Trix Hogl (1933) studied under Rudolf Olgiati and Ernst Gisel. It is fascinating to note how the couple eventually moved away from a particularly Swiss form of Modernism.Since founding their ‘Allgemeine Entwurfsanstalt’ (General Design Institute) in 1967, Trix and Robert Haussmann have been questioning the modernist doctrine of continually inventing the new. In their work, they turn to architectural and art history, to extract and update historic models. Evading the dictum ‘form follows function,’ their designs pursue a ‘Manierismo Critico’ (a critical Mannerism), permitting them to merge the old and the new, to generate dissent and work with ambiguity, contradiction, and chance.By employing illusionism as a means of material alienation and through the optical dissolution of volume through mirroring, they create complex, illusionary, apparently infinite spaces, furniture, and objects, which humorously undermine the canonization of concepts of value and order.http://www.blouinartinfo.com/ Founder: Louise Blouin Read more