Swiss master Valerio Olgiati's first retrospective offers insight into his conceptual approach, says Irina Davidovici

摘要

This exhibition of seven projects constitutes Valerio Olgiati's first retrospective since establishing his eponymous practice in 1996. The show includes the Yellow House in Flims, Switzerland (1999), the refurbishment that established his practice's reputation. Installed in the formal atrium of the Gottfried Semper-designed Polytechnikum at the ETH University in Zurich, it builds a connection with Switzerland's foremost educational institution and offers Olgiati's work as a moment in the history of ETH's specific architectural culture. Anyone familiar with the thinking behind Olgiati's projects will recognise the familiar pattern of a logical system short-circuited by irrationality and intuition.