Silvia Gmür passed away last Monday, 24.01.2022, at the age of 82. The Basel architect became known for her austere and radical buildings with a strong sculptural expression.
Silvia Gmür passed away last Monday, 24.01.2022, at the age of 82. The Basel architect became known for her austere and radical buildings with a strong sculptural expression.
She was one of the great Swiss architects and leaves behind an impressive body of work: Silvia Gmür. On Monday, January 24, 2022, the Basel architect, who was known for buildings with a strong sculptural expression, passed away at the age of 82.
50 years ago, in 1972, Silvia Gmür founded her own architecture firm in Basel after years of practice in Zurich (Ernst Gisel), Paris, London and New York (Mitchell/Giurgola Architects). At the time, it was still quite unusual for a woman to run an office on her own. In 2005, she restarted it together with her son Reto Gmür. She has been a Senior Consultant at the office since 2018 and was still present on site until two years ago.
Silvia Gmür has made a name for herself with residential buildings, but above all with hospital buildings in Graubünden, Basel, St. Gallen and Solothurn. She developed the formal language of her austere and poetic, radical and classical buildings by studying the history of architecture and its geometric principles. Her designs were also characterized by a special attention to the interplay of material, surface, light and movement. “I always wanted a profession in design,” Silvia Gmür once said. “I first thought about becoming a sculptor as a child. I decided on architecture relatively late, just before I started university. I was perhaps a bit pre-disposed in that respect, as my father and grandfather came from the construction industry.”
Together with her son Reto, the architect then designed the Institute of Pathology / Institute of Forensic Medicine at St. Gallen Cantonal Hospital (2005/2011) and the two-family house Casa ai Pozzi in Minusio (2009/2010). From 1995 to 2001, she worked intensively with Livio Vacchini in Basel and Locarno. She also carried out the conversion of the Papyrus AG commercial building in Basel (1998/1999) and three houses in Beinwil (1995/1999). She also realized the conversion and extension of Klinikum 1 West with a new operating theatre wing and a new women’s clinic in Basel (1997/2003).
The architect has received several awards, including the prestigious Prix Meret Oppenheim from the Swiss Confederation in 2011. At the time, the jury said: “With Silvia Gmür, the Federal Office of Culture is honoring an architect who has set her own accent of classical beauty in recent decades. The architect’s buildings are characterized by their concise language outside the mainstream.” She has also received the Riehen Culture Prize (2001) and the Best Architects Award several times, for example for the Müller residential building in Basel (2011), the St. Gallen Cantonal Hospital (2012) and most recently for the Bürgerspital in Solothurn (2021).
However, the Zurich-born architect’s work goes beyond construction and environmental design. She taught as a guest lecturer (architectural design) at ETH Zurich. She had studied architecture there herself from 1959 to 1964 and graduated under Werner Moser. She was also active on various committees, such as the Basel-Stadt Cantonal Urban Design Commission and the Federal Commission for the Preservation of Historical Monuments. In 1994, for example, she sat alongside Leza Dosch, Tita Carloni, Christian Menn and Stefan Engler on the jury for the Graubünden Awards for Good Buildings. She was also the first woman to chair the Association of Swiss Architects (BSA), which added the female form to its name last year under its second president, Ludovica Molo.
“We are infinitely grateful to Silvia for her commitment to architecture, her search for a timeless design and spatial expression in healthcare buildings, residential buildings and public buildings,” says her son Reto Gmür on the joint firm’s website. “The architecture firm has always been passionate about architecture and good solutions for people. We will preserve and continue this tradition in Silvia’s spirit.”
Tip: A detailed, transcribed interview with Silvia Gmür (May 2013) on her training, her role models, her architectural work, her practice and the position of women in architecture can be found in the Oral History Archive, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich.
A portrait of the office was written by Roberto Masiero: Silvia Gmür Reto Gmür Architekten (trilingual, 2016). In the recent publication “Frauen in der Architektur. Rückblicke, Positionen, Ausblicke”, edited by Ursula Schwitalla (2021), Silvia Gmür has her say with her own project.
