“I cannot think of anything worse than architecture with a signature”

GAM: Welcome to Graz University of Technology, Lukas Imhof. You were appointed Professor of Building Construction and Design in October 2024 and are now also head of the Institute of Architecture Technology. At the same time, you run an architecture firm in Zurich, Lukas Imhof Architektur, which was founded in 2004. Before your appointment, you taught for ten years as a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in the School of Engineering and Architecture. What was your focus there?

LI: I taught a design studio with a changing focus. We conducted an interdisciplinary project module with groups of four to five students from the disciplines of architecture, interior design, building technology, and structural engineering. The teaching team was also made up of these disciplines. Our approach was very interdisciplinary from the outset—there was initially an interdisciplinary block week during which the students from the different disciplines had to agree on a design thesis and an interdisciplinary sustainability objective. The interdisciplinary group stayed together for the whole semester—only the last few weeks were dedicated to a disciplinary specialization. Another module I developed and led with Pascale Bellorini focused more on the atmospheric dimension of architecture. The result was a design based on an existing space. Our starting point was an examination of specific spaces—for example, bar rooms or sacred spaces. The students first explored these spaces in textual form and through photography. We worked together with an architectural photographer, Rasmus Norlander, who accompanied the photographic documentation of the space, while the text work was accompanied by the architect and author Christoph Ramisch. The students then created digital 3D models and renders of the existing analyzed space, which gave them a good understanding of the space in different dimensions. In the end, this served as a basis for developing a spatial, material, or content-related manipulation of the space.

GAM: You started studying architecture at ETH Zurich at the age of twenty. What motivated you to choose architecture?

LI: When I was sixteen, I discovered the Le Corbusier monograph by Stanislaus von Moos in my high school library and thought, let me see who that was. I then read the book and found this historical study of architecture fascinating. After reading that book, I wanted to become an architect—and after that, I never thought about becoming anything else.

GAM: Who influenced you the most during your studies? You had many different teachers.

LI: That is correct. Flora Ruchat-Roncati was one of the first formative figures. I was fascinated by her character, as well as by her way of thinking and talking about building, territory, and place. Arthur Rüegg was also important because he was such a meticulous researcher into the construction methods of modernism. I was impressed by his knowledge and skills. And finally, of course, Miroslav Šik, who became my most important teacher at school. He conveyed a strong connection between history and use, design and construction. This might not be that well known because people mainly recognize his impressive visualizations—but every picture always had to be backed up with a construction. There was a 1:20 or 1:50 plan for every visualization; he was never interested in the picture only, but also in how to do it. This and his humanity made him the most influential figure in my studies. And I also worked for him afterward.

GAM: You worked in his office after your studies? 

LI: Exactly, I worked in his architectural firm for two and a half years, and then for eight years in his institute at ETH Zurich.

GAM: You were first a teaching associate, a research associate, and then an assistant professor, which is one step higher in the Swiss hierarchy. What did you do as a research associate?

LI: In my case, research meant writing, that is, writing about architecture. After a thesis on architectural visualizations, I developed Midcomfort and turned it into a book, and later worked on a book about Miroslav Šik and his role as a teacher.

GAM: What thesis did you propose in the publication Midcomfort?

LI: The thesis is that there is a kind of tradition of reform in architecture that has always existed, uninterrupted by modernism and ever-present in the history of modern architecture. This architecture, which we summarize as reform architecture, and which counters the spectacular disruption of modernism with its constant development, has produced successful results over the last 120 years. Reform-oriented housing from the 1910s, for example, are still popular today and are often gladly inhabited. The thesis of Midcomfort is that these diverse currents never entirely disappeared and that one can continue building on time-tested concepts, while blending in the new in comprehensible steps. This can be observed in the quite banal assertion that most of us prefer to live in old buildings rather than new ones.

This assertion is not entirely correct; it is a bit polemical and banal, but many people still like to live in old apartments, especially if they are not “educated” in the field of architecture. In Midcomfort, I am not saying that these historic apartments can or should continue to be built like this. But I do ask myself: Where does this affection for rooms in old buildings come from? And how can the comfort of an apartment in an old building be transformed into a new building, into contemporary architecture? How can we integrate the lifestyle reforms, social changes, and new ways of life that have emerged since the 1910s? For instance the topic of leisure and contact with nature in residential buildings, as an example, is illustrated through the use of a private outdoor space. The use of the kitchen and the relationship to cooking has also changed considerably. Here I ask in Midcomfort: How can today’s needs and the qualities of historic homes be brought together? One example is how patchwork families often work quite well in an old building. What are the special features of an old apartment that make this possible? Interconnected rooms of a similar size, for example, can be used in different ways.

Sometimes you do not have to reinvent things just because the world has changed. Sometimes conventional architecture works well for new needs—after all, a bedroom is a bedroom; you sleep there and like to close the door. If you can then separate it from the living room with a double door or use it as a home office for remote work, then you achieve the flexibility of use that modernism often sought, with the simplest of means. Therefore, what is it that really needs to be redone, and what qualities can be found in what is already there? Where can the new requirements be further developed, linked, and slightly reconfigured with the qualities of the existing, the historical, or the conventional? Not to be nostalgic, but rather to carry the established qualities of the historical into the present. 

GAM: And at the same time, you once said that the book is also a polemic, one that is very much directed against modernism.

LI: Yes, that is right. In hindsight, modernism has, in many ways, simply failed. Except for the modernist house, since single-family homes today are sometimes ordered “in Bauhaus style.” Modernist architecture remains an unloved form of architecture in large parts of the world and among many populations. In reality, it became a car-friendly, functionalist approach to urban design that is often not particularly appreciated. From today’s perspective, one can evaluate it and we can think about what can still be used from it and what not. However, the polemic was more against the fact that many people today still consider what was developed in the 1920s to be “modern.” This style of modernism, often referred to as “classic modernism,” is now already 100 years old, and continuing to build in this way today is nothing other than a new historicism, a historically inspired approach to architecture. 

When I wrote the book, this was still more influential for architecture ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago than it is today. “Classic modernism” was what was taught and conveyed at architecture schools. Since then, it has eased somewhat. In Midcomfort, I write against this uncritical reception of modernism. And it does become a polemic when I argue that modernist architects rarely truly cared about people’s needs. Instead, they were primarily concerned with their architecture and how they express themselves through it—even to the point of developing a “signature style”—and I cannot think of anything worse than architecture with a signature: I have built something, it looks like me, and now you have to live in it. That was, of course, also the aim of this polemic: architects who make architecture for its own sake, prioritizing their personal style over living comfort and never fully taking the needs of the residents seriously.

GAM: But what would be the difference if the students now looked at your architecture and said: Lukas Imhof Architecture has a signature style. Then you would say . . .

LI: Hopefully not.

GAM: Hopefully not. Please explain to us what is so problematic about the handwriting definition? Do you see a signature style as something like uniformity in expression?

LI: Exactly, a personal uniformity created by an author, so that the building, for example, says, “I am a Zaha Hadid building,” regardless of where it stands and what purpose it serves. That is what I mean by signature style. A building should not proclaim, “I am the work of this or that person,” but instead should convey more about its use, the city, the place, its inhabitants—and if, in the end, there happens to be an oval window somewhere because the architect likes it, that is not a problem either. That would be more like a small signature at the bottom right corner to complete the picture—but never a bold signature painted across the city.

GAM: To what extent have you integrated this approach, which you pursued in your past research, into your work at the office?

LI: The work in the office is, of course, shaped by this mindset. But it is also—fortunately, I must say—not a completely direct implementation of Midcomfort. The book was very much focused on housing and, for various reasons, we did not or could not do much residential construction in the office for a long time, instead working more on school buildings or kindergartens or industrial buildings, for example, wastewater treatment plants. It is actually a good thing that I didn’t write a book after years of thinking and research—and then proceed and implement it one-to-one; it was beneficial that ten years had passed before I worked on something entirely different. Only recently have we had the opportunity to engage in residential construction. The Lindenhof in Thurgau is one such building that incorporates ideas from Midcomfort. It is a residential building that has a lot to offer but is intended to encourage a sense of communal living. However, the residents are not forced to live communally—they are rather gently encouraged to meet and get to know each other. But they can also retreat, if they wish. This approach is certainly informed by the ideas in Midcomfort, but without being a direct derivation of them.

GAM: And what prevented you from submitting the book to ETH Zurich as a dissertation?

LI: Well, for one, very few dissertations were done at ETH Zurich at that time, in architecture, actually none at all. That was very uncommon. At most, doctoral theses were written in the field of architectural history, but otherwise, the topic of dissertations was not relevant for associates. That’s why I never really thought about it. I would probably have had to do a lot of academic work, whereas the book itself is quite personal, occasionally makes assertions, and touches on many areas of architecture without exploring them in the depth required for an academic paper. Ultimately, what mattered to me was the result: this book was out in the world, and it was noticed and discussed, and whether I earned a doctorate with it or not was less important to me than its impact. That’s perhaps one point—on the other hand, ETH Zurich at the time was very practice-oriented; the chairs of the design institutes all came from professional practice, which strongly influenced the discourse.

GAM: Which of all these life experiences will flow into your teaching at Graz University of Technology? How do you envision teaching and its focus at such a large institute as the Institute of Architecture Technology (IAT)?

LI: I have now taken over a fantastic institute with a certain potency and I would like to steer it very strongly toward sustainability, in terms of both construction and design. This naturally includes a strong focus on timber construction, a field that is covered here at the institute and that has also become an important aspect in my office. The goal is to move in a direction where construction and design are closely intertwined and approached in a highly interdisciplinary manner. This brings into play the things and design tools that I have learned, as well as the approach of using visualizations to evaluate everything we construct—for example, how it appears from a person’s point of view. Not just the view of the model from above, but the perspective of a human observer. Designing with images is something that comes from my time at ETH Zurich and that I definitely want to establish here as a formative working method, along with everything that goes with it. At the same time, the work that the institute is currently doing and has already done remains important. There are amazing things that are already here—and it’s about continuing that work and transforming it into something new.

GAM: Will the cultural and architectural context of Switzerland, which has had a strong influence on you, flow into your work at Graz University of Technology? If so, in what ways?

LI: Of course, absolutely. I am naturally influenced by Swiss architecture, and it forms the foundation of my work. However, there are also non-Swiss people working here at the institute who bring their own experiences, which I am very excited to learn about and integrate with my own perspective. In addition, Graz also has a rich history of architecture, which I am very curious about, and I am already in the process of exploring it a little.

GAM: Have you already considered the direction you want to take with research at the institute?

LI: Yes, there was a research project here that has just been completed—it is called “Circular Standards”—which I think is a fantastic project. The idea was to try and develop a catalog of details that works in a circular way. Although the project is now finished, I would like to take it up again, to continue it and expand it, perhaps even on a larger scale. The aim could be to create a standard reference work so that someone in the office could say: “Let’s check here to see how this can be done.” The university can, of course, play an important role between practice and research. Developing such circular details or designs that ideally comply with standards—which are becoming increasingly complex—is something the industry doesn’t typically do. Thinking holistically about standards, sustainability, and circularity is often addressed in practice only in fragments. This is usually done by small offices, and as a small office, it is nearly impossible to systematize. I see a university like Graz University of Technology and the faculty’s institutes as a central hub that can gather and systematize these practical experiences and, in collaboration with industry, create something that neither industry nor practice alone can achieve. That would be my vision for a research department like that of the IAT.

Apart from that, I’m interested in an approach to simple building, to simplification. Planning and construction are becoming increasingly complex, and we are also losing certain skills as architects. I think we need to move back toward a direction where things become simpler and easier again. Building services should also become simpler, making them more durable, repairable, circular, and adaptable for reuse. The goal should be to minimize highly specific components and complex layered structures, instead favoring straightforward elements that are easy to manufacture and to repair. Florian Nagler at the Technical University of Munich is working in this direction. “Simple construction” is something that I can well imagine as a guiding principle for the IAT, though I haven’t translated it into a concrete teaching and research concept yet.

GAM: Holding a professorship at the Institute of Architecture Technology, how do you interpret the name of the institute? Or, let’s say, its thematic focus?

LI: I do not fully understand the name of the institute and I think I would probably like to rename it. To me, the term “technology” does not seem to be really transferable to architecture. The institute used to be called “Hochbau und Entwurf” (Building Construction and Design), which is a more grounded title. But perhaps we would rather call it “Architektur and Technik” for the sake of continuity, so we wouldn’t have to redesign the logo. However, I’d prefer to remove the term “technology” from the institute’s name. 

Otherwise, I understand the institute or the institute’s task, my task or our task, as being a design chair, which, like every design I have always made, has a very strong connection to building, construction, and implementation. While I acknowledge that it can sometimes be exciting to make designs that cannot or will not be built, this is not particularly interesting to me. When it comes to design, what in turn interests me is the building itself; and in architecture, the built environment. How it ages, how it is used, how it is perceived, how it is renovated, how it behaves over time, and also how to make it simple. And I clearly understand it as a design chair, for it’s about design, but the design has a strong connection to the technical, to building and to construction.

GAM: In this faculty, design is also taught as a focus at other institutes. How can students envision the pedagogical approach at IAT in the future?

LI: Two things need to be said: first, I don’t have teaching responsibilities in my first semester, and I will still be developing and refining the focus areas; second, I have assistants with a lot of teaching experience. I want to tell them as little as possible because they are already very capable and are good at it. However, the direction will be that design is thought of in interdisciplinary terms, strongly influenced by the technology of construction and also by building systems, with an emphasis on simplicity, circularity, durability, and, as far as construction is concerned, with a strong connection to tradition. Almost always, when we invent something new, we are only rediscovering something old again—and this process of invention as the rediscovery of something existing, which is then naturally adapted, is what interests me. Of course, one does not close oneself off from new developments, new requirements, since there are new materials, that goes without saying. 

But there are also old materials that are highly efficient, such as wood, which we already know how to process. In the appointment lecture, I showed the example of a large wooden beam that you can now order already glued, which means it contains glue inside, making it impossible to reuse or to just burn. It takes a significant amount of energy to produce it, even just to transport the wood to the glue factory––so we tried to figure out: How can we position two regular wooden beams on top of each other without glue, so that they are structurally secure? You can secure them from slipping with wedges or a sawtooth cut, and then they are securely connected. We thought about this and then looked into literature and old buildings and saw that this was already being done 300 years ago. That’s what I mean.

GAM: So, rethinking the time-tested methods . . .  

LI: Exactly, rediscovering what already exists and selectively complementing it with something new. Where possible, working in the tried-and-tested manner without glue, and if it’s not possible, then using glue. But if it’s possible, we do it the way it has always been done—purely with wood, needing nothing but a log that you cut to size. 

GAM: Thank you for the interview!

Translation: Anđela Marinković