Animate Architecture

Meanwhile I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the model of Annexe’s installation in the Swiss Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale. It’s captivating how Elena Chiavi, Kathrin Füglister, Amy Perkins, and Myriam Uzor, in collaboration with the artist Axelle Stiefel and the graphic designer Emma Kouassi, translate central themes of the Saffa Kunsthalle, created by Lisbeth Sachs in 1958: the interplay between inside and outside, the lightness of the sheltering roof, the conflicting relationship between the concrete materialization of the walls and their floating design. It will undoubtedly be a magnet for the Biennale’s international audience and inspire them to want to learn more about the creator of the original, Lisbeth Sachs. Just as Annexe «animates» their building with the revival, «Animate Architecture» enlivens her life and work. I would like to encourage you to get the publicity for the project moving again.

Lisbeth Sachs’s credo was to enliven architecture, as captured in the English title «Animate Architecture.» Her projects, conceived as spatial clothing, are also literally «wearable.»

Research in which the term «women» appears is to be denied funding in the USA. Supporting «Animate Architecture» - the translation into English of the monograph «Lisbeth Sachs: Architect, Researcher, Journalist» - is also a statement against this request. In addition, «Animate Architecture» offers the unique opportunity to dedicate the first monograph in English by the gta publishing house of the ETH Zurich to a woman and to make her work internationally known.

The translation «Animate Architecture» offers the unique opportunity to dedicate the first English-language monograph from gta Verlag to a woman - a step towards equal justice. The ratio of publications on male and female Swiss architects listed in the library network is around 90:10.