"Ambiguous and multi-layered spatial collages": Architect Lilitt Bollinger leads a visiting studio at D-ARCH
In her studio in Nuglar, Bollinger cultivates the craftsmanship and does a lot of remodelling. She has been Co-President of the Association of Swiss Architects BSA since May.
In 1997, Lilitt Bollinger together with Cristine Strössler founded the bag manufacturer Prognose in Basel, which she ran for ten years. She graduated in architecture from ETH Zurich in 2010 and founded her own office in Basel three years later, where she designs products as well as buildings. Bollinger has been a municipal councillor for building construction and planning in Nuglar-St. Pantaleon since 2021, where she is committed to quality assurance procedures. She has been involved in the Zug Cityscape Commission since 2024. Since May of this year, she has co-chaired the Association of Swiss Architects BSA together with architect Anja Beer. In the autumn semester, she will lead a guest studio at the Institute for Design and Architecture IEA.
In 2019, Lilitt Bollinger built townhouses out of wood on the foundations of a wine warehouse in Nuglar. The work received the "Hase in Gold" from Hochparterre magazine and was honoured with an award for good buildings in the canton of Solothurn as well as the Prix Lignum. The architect is currently working with Luna Productions on a small site development in Aarau, the existing buildings of which are being preserved and extended.
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Transformation Altes Weinlager, Nuglar (Fotos: Mark Niedermann) -
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Vote at the municipal assembly in Nuglar to draw up construction profiles with the Breitenrüti youth club working group (Photos: Lilitt Bollinger Studio) -
Bollinger's architecture firm deals with conversions and supervises projects from design to final realisation. "The site is seen as the scene of an ongoing transformation process, in which one's own intervention is a further building block in an ongoing narrative," writes the architect. Her studio is strongly linked to craftsmanship. “I'm looking for a simpler, more direct way of building with unruly constructive details.” Lilitt Bollinger sees unexpected qualities in the everyday, which she uncovers and emphasises to further develop the existing in line with the location. "New, powerful layers are added to the context, and ambiguous and multi-layered spatial collages are created by overlaying the existing with new interventions," says the architect.
In addition to her practical work, the architect is also politically active in her profession. “This is an opportunity to help shape the built environment from a different social role and influence what climate-friendly architecture could look like.” According to Bollinger, self-empowerment involves close observation, exchange and co-determination, such as when she set up building profiles with a working group in Nuglar. This approach will also be a topic in her guest studio.
Visiting studios
Every year the Department of Architecture invites six visiting studios, that teach design for one to four semesters. They are selected by the institutes with the involvement of the professors, the mid-level academic staff and the students. In the fall semester, in addition to the landscape architect Céline Baumann and the architects Oliver Lütjens and Thomas Padmanabhan, the department is welcoming the ZAS* association, the architect Lillit Bollinger, the architect Gilles Retsin and Anja Beer and David Merz from the Beer Merz architecture office as design guests.
Lilitt Bollinger – IEA Lecture Series Design and Architecture (Ringvorlesung)
13 November 2024, 18.00 – 20.00
ETH Zurich Hönggerberg HIL E 1