Clavien Rossier Architectes

In Geneva for seven years now, the Clavien Rossier office shares with us, through the description of Valéry Clavien, the general ideias supporting their works evolution and framing the highly competitive swiss reality.

— The practise —

“In every project that we are doing we are looking for something not specificly the same, but we are looking that we follow general lines. And in each of our works we can find some subjects that are still remaining in different projects. For example: the fact that things have a substance, a depth, that they have a body. This kind of things, things that we are building, that will stay…”

— Influences —

“Of course everyone is influenced by people, by what we are seeing, also by architects of course, but it's not so that we are thinking of a specific architecture when we are building a project.
For example, the idea that it can move, that it has a specific shape that gives a direction. This kind of things are more important, i would say, that just a reference to a kind of architecture or to a specific person or something like this.”

— Start —

“It's based on swiss architecture, it depends on the site, it depends on lots of things, but usually we really like it to...that it's not imported from I don't know where.
We are trying to have a logic of construction that is really found in something in the area, that is not something coming from outer space, that is very important to us. To make something new but with tools that are very usual.
We try to give a specific personality to the project, we often see the project as an object in a way, something like a system, it has to have his own personality and we try to give it a bit like a marionete…”

— clients & architecture —

“...the first house that we built in the Valais, the clients wanted to keep a lot of elements from the existing barn. And we had a lot of discussion to convince them that we should really cut off the biggest part of the house, just cut it off, cut the roof, cut the walls, and we just kept what we just needed. And it was very violent in a way, a violent process and we really had to convince them and try to start something that they didn't wanted at the beginning.”