The first comprehensive and personal look behind the scenes at the architect couple Trix and Robert Haussmann's planning, design and working processes.
From the very outset of their collaboration in 1967, Trix and Robert Haussmann subjected the principles of modernist functionalism to a reductio ad absurdum. It all started with the Swiss Werkbund's Chair Fun exhibition (also in 1967) of Haussmann objects like their "Anti-Chair": a chair made of fluorescent tubes that would likely collapse if anyone actually tried to sit on it.
This spoof of functionalism eventually led, in 1978, to the first of their so-called "Lehrstücke". They reinterpreted the stylistic devices to be found in Mannerism— the estrangement of materials, spatial illusions, accelerated perspectives, anamorphoses, and literarizing forms—and applied them to a dozen experimental objects, e.g. an imitation column segmented into drawers as a "Disruption of Form through Function". Their "Didactic Pieces" questioned modernism, the reigning paradigm of their own architectural training, and took it to its logical—and absurd—conclusion. Their Lehrstücke critically, ironically and playfully subverted the contemporary discourse on architecture and design, which had ossified into a reductionist obsession with "good form".
This book provides the first comprehensive and personal look behind the scenes at their planning, design and working processes. Trix Haussmann herself retraces the genesis and elaboration of their twelve Lehrstücke in twelve chapters, accompanied by drawings, sketches and reference images. And in a conversation, art and architecture historians Gabrielle Schaad and Achim Reese place them in their historical and contemporary context.
Trix (born 1933) and Robert Haussmann (1931-2022) are two of the most important architects, designers and theoreticians, consequential in influencing and helping to displace classical modernism in Switzerland. They have realized about 650 projects in their lifetime; in Zurich these include the Da-Capo-Bar, the new main train station, the boutique Weinberg and the Kronenhallenbar. The year 1967 marks their marriage and the establishment of their joint office Allgemeine Entwurfsanstalt. It is also the year they began working together, a collaboration which has brought forth works breaking with the dogmas of entrenched architectural practices.
