Annette Gigon (born May 24, 1959) is a Swiss architect born in Herisau, Switzerland. She is a founding partner of the office Gigon/Guyer and held a Chair of Architecture at

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

Life

Annette Gigon graduated from the

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology The Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology are two institutes of higher education in Switzerland (part of the ETH Domain): * Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland *Sw ...

(ETH) in

Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

in 1984. After graduating, she worked for Marbach & Rüegg architects in Zurich from 1984 to 1985. Then, from 1985 to 1988, she worked for

Herzog & de Meuron Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. is an international architecture firm headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, with additional offices in Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Munich, New York City, Paris, and San Francisco. Founded in 1978 by Jacques Herzog and ...

architects in Basel. She also worked as an independent architect from 1987 to 1989. In 1989, she founded Gigon/Guyer Architects with Mike Guyer, based in Zurich. Their firm soon became internationally known by their museum designs (

Kirchner Kirchner is an occupational surname of German origin, derived from the Middle High German word (' sexton', 'priest', 'church assistant' or 'church property administrator'). Notable people with the name include: Arts * Alfred Kirchner (born 1937) ...

Museum in

Davos Davos (, ; or ; ; Old ) is an Alpine resort town and municipality in the Prättigau/Davos Region in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of (). Davos is located on the river Landwasser, in the Rhaetian ...

, the Museum Extension in Winterthur, Kunstmuseum Appenzell, and the Archaeological Museum and Park in Kalkriese near Osnabrück, Germany). Moreover, they have shared their time between more museum projects (the

Swiss Museum of Transport The Swiss Museum of Transport or ''Verkehrshaus der Schweiz'' (literally "Transportation House of Switzerland") in Lucerne opened in July 1959 and exhibits all forms of transport including trains, automobiles, ships and aircraft as well as communi ...

in Lucerne, for instance) and developing new solutions for both exclusive and cost-effective residential architecture and office buildings. Between their noticeable examples are the office high-rise Prime Tower in Zurich, the Würth Haus Rorschach, and the remodeling of the Löwenbräu-Areal. Gigon worked as a visiting professor at EPFL Lausanne in 2002. In 2003, she became a member of the

Academy of Arts, Berlin The Academy of Arts () is a state arts institution in Berlin, Germany. The task of the Academy is to promote art, as well as to advise and support the states of Germany. The academy's predecessor organization was founded in 1696 by Elector F ...

. She started as a guest professor at ETH Zurich in 2008 and has been a professor since 2012. She is married and currently lives in Zurich.

Notable projects and awards

Gigon and Guyer are most widely known for their museum designs, but also construct many office, public, and residential buildings.

Kirchner Museum

This museum building was planned and executed from January 1990 to August 1992 in Davos, Switzerland. It was created to house the art of German expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and was the first major commission of Gigon and Guyer. The museum earned them the “Auszeichnung guter Bauten” awarded by the Canton of Grisons, Bauen in den Bergen Prize awarded by Sexten Kultur, and the Daylight-Award awarded by the Velux-Stiftung.

Kunstmuseum Winterthur Extension

This extension was planned and executed from 1993 to 1995 and was built to create additional space onto the existing museum for the next decades. It also contains a car park. This museum extension made Gigon and Guyer finalists for the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture, awarded by the European Union.

Museum Liner

Located in Appenzell, Switzerland, this museum was built to honor the paintings of two locals, Father Carl Augusta and Carl Walter Liner. It was planned and constructed from 1996 to 1998. It was later renamed to Kunstmuseum Appenzell.

Prime Tower The Prime Tower, also named "Maag-Tower" in an earlier stage of planning, is a skyscraper in Zürich, Switzerland, used mainly as office space. At a height of , it was the tallest building in Switzerland from 2011 until 2015, when the Roche Towe ...

This skyscraper stood as Switzerland's tallest building from 2011 to 2015. It was planned in 2004 and constructed from January 2008 to December 2011 and currently serves as an office building. Since the construction of this skyscraper on the western outskirts of Zurich, the population in the area has increased by 4,000 and the number of jobs by 10,000.

Office Building Lagerstrasse

This office building was planned in 2006 and executed from 2007 to 2013. It is also known as Europaallee 21 and is part of an urban reconstruction project in Zurich. Gigon and Guyer collaborated on this building with

Max Dudler Max Dudler (born 18 November 1949 in Altenrhein, Switzerland) is a Swiss architect with international fame. The main characteristic of Max Dudler's architecture is a combination of strict Swiss minimalism and classical rationalism that is foun ...

and

David Chipperfield Sir David Alan Chipperfield, , (born 18 December 1953) is a British architect. He established David Chipperfield Architects in 1985, which grew into a global architectural practice with offices in London, Berlin, Milan, Shanghai, and Santiago d ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gigon, Annette 1959 births Living people Swiss women architects Members of the Academy of Arts, Berlin ETH Zurich alumni