Mentor & Protégé 2016-17

Sir David Chipperfield has selected the 34 year-old Swiss designer and academic, Simon Kretz, as his protégé in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative for 2016–2017.

The announcement was made at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Kretz will observe and work at Sir David’s practice at several points over the year.

Kretz is not exactly a novice, in an architectural or intellectual sense. In 2010, he co-founded his first practice in Zurich with Christina Nater, which specializes in one-off houses and interventions in historic buildings; in 2014, Kretz and Christian Salewski established a studio that concentrates largely on urban design. Kretz is also a Senior Lecturer in Urban and Spatial Design at ETH Zurich, and in Design Thinking at the University of Zurich.

It is no surprise, then, that his favourite project by Chipperfield is the restoration and transformation of Berlin’s magnificent 19th-century Neues Museum, which reopened in 2009 after languishing as a bomb-ruined hulk for 60 years. “It’s like going back to school,” says Kretz of the new and old parts of the building. “It’s a museum, but it’s also an encyclopaedia of architecture, and this I truly love.”

He was travelling on a packed train when he learned that Sir David had selected him as his protégé. “I was overjoyed,” he says, “but I couldn’t share the moment. Being next to complete strangers was not the ideal setting for receiving such great news.”

His selection followed interviews of shortlisted Rolex protégé finalists at Sir David’s London studio, followed by dinner – “which was really fun. He’s very humorous, and we didn’t really talk about architecture. The subjects ranged from Brexit [the possibility of Britain leaving the European Union], to Berlusconi, to what we did in our free time.”

Before setting up his two practices, Simon worked as an intern at the studio of eminent architect Rem Koolhaas, who is arguably the profession’s most provocative and high-profile thinker. Kretz has been particularly inspired by the ideas of the 19th-century Prussian city planner Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and the Spanish architect and urban designer Manuel de Solà-Morales. The Austrian architect, Hermann Czech, one of his teachers at ETH Zurich, and the university’s head of urban design, Kees Christiaanse, have also influenced him.

“I like people who don’t think of architecture as the last thing, and then it’s finished,” he explains. “I think of architecture as the first thing – the beginning of something.”

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