n-architektur:
Girls Boarding School, Disentis, Switzerland
Gion A. Caminada
“When I’m designing, I’m at the same time exercised by the problems of this world. With my architecture I try to help solve these problems. For me, building is a way of life. I have built little things, a telephone box, a mortuary, at the moment I am designing a public toilet, and above all, houses, all sorts of things that people need for their lives. Beauty is not the first consideration. I cannot persuade a farmer that he should build a beautiful cowshed. But if the cowshed works well, then it can be beautiful too. In other words, architecture must meet a need. I do not explain my buildings in terms of complicated theoretical edifices or arbitrary artistic inspirations. That is not quite enough for me. In fact, I believe that architecture, which always derives from an idea, embraces a totality of events in which a kind of sensuality can be discerned. I build to endow a real need with built form. I was recently talking to a curator of historic monuments about a new building regulation. He said that the regulation must lay down that building has to meet a certain minimum standard. But how is quality “as such” to be built? Architecture has first of all to fulfil a function, be meaningful in some way. This comes before quality. That has always been the case. If a building makes sense, quality comes into being. It determines quality. A good design embodies a totality of all events and also has the capacity to tell stories. Something has to come into being that was not determined in advance. I want there to be stories, and so I build houses for eternity.”
