Fritz Metzger, St. Peter and Paul catholic church, 1966-67

Fritz Metzger (1898-1973) was a pioneer and master of modernist church architecture in Switzerland. He built over 20 catholic churches between 1928 and 1968. Here are some snapshots from a recent visit to the Peter and Paul church in Allschwil near Basel, Switzerland, one of his last projects.

Expo 64: Children's pavilion

Some images from the Nestlé sponsored children's pavilion at Expo 64, the Swiss National Exhibition 1964 in Lausanne. The playground was apparently based on concepts of the adventure playground. The elegant concrete roof by architect Michel Magnin is among the very few structures from Expo 64 still standing today. The other one is a part of Max Bill's pavilion, now the Théâtre de Vidy.
I'm also posting this because I had the pleasure to write about Expo 64 for the Expo themed new issue of the excellent Modernist magazine. More about that later.

And let's see if I can cram some more posts about Expo64 into the year of its 50th anniversary.

Click here for previous Expo 64 posts.

Sources:

1-2 Musée Historique de Lausanne

3-6 by Josiane Blaser-Noverraz from her Expo64 album at notrehistoire.ch

7-9 via this Pinterest album

Private photos from Expo 64

50 years ago today, the Swiss National Exhibition, the Expo 64 opened its doors in Lausanne. Here's some unfiltered view via a pile of private photos I recently found on the flea market. Their original size is 6.5x6.5 cm, but I scanned them in 600 dpi, so you can zoom in. I might add some information about the pavillions and artworks later, but so far, please make your own stories.

UPDATE: I wrote a text based on these photos for The Modernist magazine. Here's a slightly revised online version. 

More posts on this seminal exhibition to come. Please check out my previous posts on Expo 64:
Pics from the construction and the buildings (from the construction foremen magazine; the images from the Swiss army's "concrete hedgehog" are probably the most tumblred pics from my blog).
Rolf Liebermann's composition for 156 office machines.

 

Projects for modernist protestant churches in 1950s Switzerland

Architectural models of protestant churches about to be built in Switzerland (in 1959). From an issue on modernist protestant churches of the seminal swiss architecture journal Werk, 8/1959.

Top to bottom:
Project for a church in Zürich-Schwamendingen by Cramer+Jaray+Paillard (an even better version was realised)
Project for a church in Reinach by Ernst Gisel (2 images), also realised quite differently.
Project for a church in Effretikon by Ernst Gisel (also got a more radical in reality)
Project for a church in in Zürich by Eduard Neuenschwander (2 images)
Project for a church in Bern Bümpliz-Bethlehem by Werner Küenzi (2 images), was built as well.

The Funkhaus Nalepastrasse and the Subharchord

I had the chance to attend an amazing event in Berlin recently. It was about the history of the Subharchord and took place at the Funkhaus Nalepastrasse.
The Funkhaus Nalepastrasse (architect: Franz Ehrlich) was the home of the radio broadcasting organisation of East Germany from 1956 to 1990. In its heyday, 3000 people worked there.
Its core are top notch recording studios for big and small orchestras, still known for their acoustics and in use (in need for some restoration though).
The Subharchord was a proto-synthesizer developed in the GDR in the 1960s. Based on the Trautonium (1930), it continued the pre-war history of electronic instruments in Germany.
In the context of the CTM festival 2013, its developer Gerhard Steinke talked about the instrument, film maker Ina Pillat showed excerpts of her forthcoming documentary about it (see video above), and two newly commissioned compositions for the instrument were played (by Biosphere and Frank Bretschneider). Furthermore, US-composer Frederic Rzweski talked about his experience of working with the Subharchord in East Berlin in the middle of the cold war, crossing the border from West to East Berlin every day. He also said that the fact that he worked with technology from the other side of the iron curtain made it difficult to play the resulting piece in the west. Nobody believed that something good could come from there. The event was also a gathering of GDR engineers involved in the project and the building. It was good to see that their work got some appreciation after having been largely dismissed for a long time after the fall of the Wall because they had created their top out-put in the wrong country.
Here are some (mobile phone-) pictures I took during the event.

Since 2008, there's a Futuro House (architect: Matti Suuronen, produced in Finland 1968-73) next to the Funkhaus. That's a whole different story, but was a nice addition to my afternoon of time travel. More information about this particular Futuro House here.