Christ & Gantenbein
International Architects Series
Monday 14 November 2016 6.30 - 8pm
Geological Society, Piccadilly, W1
£12, £6 concessions. Includes panel discussion and drinks.
Christ & Gantenbein, designers of the recently opened Kunstmuseum in Basel and the extension to the Swiss National Museum in Zurich, come to the RA to discuss their acclaimed work.
Emmanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein first came to international attention in 2002 with their victory in an international competition to design an extension to the 19th-century Swiss National Museum in Zurich. After a protracted 14-year gestation, it eventually opened to widespread acclaim earlier this year. In the interim, the practice has built up a considerable international portfolio of work across a number of building types. Museums, however, remain their specialty, with their new building for the Kunstmuseum in Basel also opening this year (a commission won in 2009).
Though separated by nearly a decade in conception – the first designed when the practice was starting, the second when it was more established – both projects exhibit a profound feel for the way materials can be combined to create spaces that appear timeless yet, as they write of the Kunstmuseum extension, "emphatically contemporary, forward-looking [and] capable of accommodating completely new forms of art and the engagement with it”.
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