Baumschlager-Eberle - History

History

Since its founding in 1985 the firm of Carlo Baumschlager and Dietmar Eberle, Architects, has carried out more than 300 building projects. Recent major projects include the Vienna International Airport extension, a large-scale hospital building in the Belgian town of Courtrai (Kortrijk), high-rises in Beijing and the UNAIDS/WHO building in Geneva.

Since starting up business in Vorarlberg, the westernmost state of Austria, with the focus of its activities on housing and residential architecture, the company has meanwhile become internationally established with branches in Lochau (Austria), Vienna, St. Gallen (Switzerland), Zürich (Switzerland), Vaduz (Liechtenstein) and Beijing. The quality of Baumschlager-Eberle architecture can be attributed to their precise and in-depth examination and analysis of the location, the company involved and their own field of professional competence. As a result of this approach is easy to understand why in the meantime the company is successful in its activities all over the world. For Baumschlager-Eberle the meaning of architecture in terms of the art of building is an abstraction of the utilitarian value on a cultural plane. In this way room is made for the cultural position of architecture as well as individual visions beyond the specific requirements of a building.

In their conceptual design the architects begin with an analysis of the location as well as the urban context of a building. They plan, as it were, from the “outside to the inside”. The aim of their architecture is to create buildings of neutral utilization that possess the potential for change and modification generating in this way durability, a prime ingredient of sustainable architecture. This is of particular importance in a society that is becoming increasingly more aware that its energy supplies are limited.

Fundamental for conserving resources in the construction sector is Baumschlager-Eberle’s skill to reduce the implementation of technical air conditioning systems through the quality of the external building shell. By optimizing the shell of the building and the structure the scope of the design is broadened to allow the significance of a building to be visible from the outside while the complex “urban landscape” – squares, roads, paths and bridges – surrounding it becomes tangible and livable on the inside. Sustainability is for Baumschlager-Eberle not only a question of technical possibilities, it results above all from the cultural acceptance of a building. Based on this philosophy the founder member, Carlo Baumschlager, born 1956, began his lecturing activities in early 2007.

As a professor at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts he works with his students on refining project-related design methodology and intensifying the dialogue between the Arts.

Dietmar Eberle, born 1952, lectures at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. His latest publication “Von der Stadt zum Haus” (“From the Town to the House”) (2007) reflects the results of a course he held at the Technology Institute.