BASEL.- The Architekturmuseum Basel presents the exhibit Interior Views: Works by Christian Kerez. The current exhibition that Christian Kerez's practice has devised with the Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum includes a strikingly large number of models, some of them on a large scale. This is no coincidence, as models are a key element in Kerez's design process. He uses models to conduct experiments with space. As the model is a spatial medium in its own right, he feels that it is more suitable for these experiments with space than a rendering (computer-generated three-dimensional view) or two-dimensional representation like a plan. According to Kerez, particular scales are suitable for work on quite specific questions. So for example he builds a model on the scale of 1:33 when he wants to clarify the details of a façade - the connections between inside and outside.

Kerez has built models on the scale of 1:10 for the exhibition in Basel. When they are this size, models seem less like objects in that they can be experienced both physically and spatially. Visitors are able to see what they are like inside.

The exhibition starts in a kind of "workshop" or "studio": Here countless little working models of earlier projects are stacked, in various materials and on differing scales, along with photographs and sketches.

The second gallery, which is conceived as the centrepiece of the Basel exhibition, concentrates on his two projects that are currently under construction. A steel structural model of the school building in Leutschenbach, Zurich, on a scale of 1:10 and a concrete model of the semi-detached house in Witikon, also on a scale of 1:10.
The third gallery takes up earlier projects that were important for the development of the current spatial concepts. Competitions and unrealized buildings effectively provided the basis for, and create a fundamental understanding of, the present work. The Salt Warehouse model on a scale of 1:20 illustrates the access concept for the Salt Warehouse school project in Zurich.

The fourth gallery is devoted exclusively to the Forsterstrasse project in Zurich, so far the Kerez practice's best-known built project. Visitors can look directly back from the standpoint of the expanded 1:10 Forsterstrasse model at the concrete model of the house in Witikon in the second gallery. This visual link is created deliberately because the two projects are related conceptually in spatial terms with reference to creating space with concrete. Apart from the model, there are two to four plans of photographs of the individual projects - laid out on tables - on show in the galleries.

Christian Kerez was born in 1962 and grew up in Zurich. After studying architecture at the ETH in Zurich he was employed for three years by Rudolf Fontana und Partner in Domat am Ems. From 1991 to 1997 he worked as a free-lance architectural photographer as a sideline in Zurich; and he has worked as an independent architect in Zurich since 1994. Kerez has held a visiting professorship, and since 2005 an assistant professorship, at the ETH in Zurich.

At the time of writing, the Kerez practice had realized two buildings: the Forsterstrasse apartment block in Zurich, 2002-2003, and the school in Eschenbach, 1999-2002. A semi-detached house in Witikon is under construction at present, along with the Leutschenbach school in Zurich. But Kerez actually won the 2005 concrete prize for the Forsterstrasse apartment block. The spatial concept is the most striking feature of the building, convincing both structurally and aesthetically. The concrete cross-walls and the concrete slabs form a bond that represents the building's load-bearing system. The free-standing cross-walls structure the space; rather than rooms, areas are created that flow into each other. A fully glazed exterior façade allows the interior and exterior to relate to each other freely.