Founding fathers and younger generations: The new monograph by Swiss engineering firm Schnetzer Puskas
Text: Florian Heilmeyer
The first thing you realise when reading this book is how young the two Swiss engineers Heinrich Schnetzer and Tivadar Puskas still are, when their firm celebrated its seventieth anniversary in 2023. However, this quickly becomes clear as the book provides a pleasantly concise overview of the biography of this unusual office: Schnetzer Puskas are already the third generation and with each generation change, the name has also changed. The founding father in 1953 was Heinz Hossdorf, according to this book an ‘engineer with a pronounced inventive spirit’, which he retained throughout his professional life. As a contemporary of Pier Luigi Nervi, Félix Candela and Heinz Isler, Hossdorf was also initially moved by shell structures, then pre-stressed elements and finally the beginnings of computer simulations. His works, in which he often and intensively collaborated with renowned architects, ranged from the gravel works in Gunzgen to a plastic pavilion for Expo 64 in Lausanne, the Bruder Klaus Church in St. Gallen and the roof of the municipal theatre in Basel.
Enjoying the new
In 1980, Hossdorf handed over an established office to the second generation, Kilian Weiss, René Guillod and Rudolf Gisi, who ran the company for 20 years until 2000 under the name Weiss Guillod Gisi Ingenieure. They continued to enjoy innovation, inventiveness and close collaboration with architectural firms: with Martin Burckhardt they developed a number of new buildings for Basel's zoo, with Michael Alder the Rankhof sports centre and with Mario Botta the Tinguely Museum, also in Basel. The collaboration with most of the architects began in the competition; in the book, the editors speak of a ‘collaboration at eye level’, which has characterised the office's work over 70 years.
Ten selected projects
The partners Schnetzer and Puskas, the third generation, have been working for the office since 2000. The slim book focuses on their work: the presentation of ten selected projects since 2013 takes up 60 pages alone, each on four pages. This is concise and entertaining, but perhaps a little too short. You often get the feeling that you would have liked to know a little more about each project. It's also a little too short when the chapter before that contains a full 20 pages of photos of current employees at the four locations - a nice gesture for the employees, but not very informative for the reader. Isn't it ultimately about the projects? Surely there would have been more to tell about the work and design development at the Dreispitz transit centre (with Bjarke Ingels Group), the TAZ publishing building in Berlin (with E2A), the Cité du Temps in Biel (with Shigeru Ban), the ERZ-Werkhof in Zurich (with Pool Architekten) or the Spore Initiative in Berlin (with AFF). As it is, it remains a quick flyover, which gains even more speed when 16 current projects are then shown, each with a picture, supplemented in the appendix by another 180 (!) completed projects since 2013, each also listed with just one photo. This is more of a dry record of work, which nevertheless highlights the incredible variety and diversity of the projects - especially as these 180 projects were selected from over 800 (!) worldwide.
When guests write
A real highlight of this book, however, are the thirteen guest essays by clients, artists, engineers and architects in the sixth section. Where often only friendly greetings emerge, here there are substantial contributions that not only describe the joint project work, but also reflect on the changing roles of architects and engineers and the changing demands on building in general. Jeanette Kuo, Mike Schlaich, Emanuel Christ, Andreas Ruby and Roger Boltshauser take the lead here, and every single contribution is absolutely worth reading. The contributions by Pierre de Meuron, who describes his collaboration with the three generations of Schnetzer Puskas as if in a slide show with small pictures, and by engineer Sarah Springman, former rector at ETH Zurich, who gives a brief and entertaining account of her entire life as an engineer, are outstanding. It is these contributions that make the office monograph a multi-layered read.
"Balanced Structures by Schnetzer Puskas", Tivadar Puskas and Dino Simonett (eds.), hardcover, 17,5 × 25 cm, 224 pages, German and English Edition, Simonett & Baer, Basel 2025
