Patrick Reuter Architecture

profile

Patrick Reuter Architecture (PR A) designs projects in the fields of architecture, urban planning and landscape design. PR A works on a wide range of different scales and typologies. Uniqueness, complexity, innovation and sustainability are of great importance and are achieved in collaboration with outstanding planers and craftsmen.
Architecture and research are intertwined in Patrick’s work; an aspect that is reflected in his ongoing academic activity. An examination of history and theory, as well as of city, territory and society, forms the basis of each design. Furthermore, Patrick’s work is characterized by an examination of space and time and thus of permanence and dynamics. Architecture thematizes the states and changes in state of a space or place. It is rigid or mobile, firm or elastic, light or heavy, or oscillates between these characteristics. Complexity and changeability define our built environment. Architecture responds to this and is ever-present, not out of complacency, but out of responsibility towards space and needs. The context is constantly changing. The conditions and state are never the same, but the attitude must always be as persuasive and coherent. Architecture needs courage and a keen sense.


Patrick Reuter studied at ETH Zurich and the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Patrick worked for the Ateliers Jean Nouvel in Paris, Richter-Dahl Rocha in Buenos Aires and Christ and Gantenbein in Basel. Patrick is the founder of the architectural practice Patrick Reuter Architecture based in Basel. Alongside the practice, Patrick has taught at Professor Marc Angelil’s studio, Institute for Urban Design, at the ETH and has conducted research on Latin American modernity, funded by the Erich Degen Foundation. Patrick is the winner of the emerging practitioner teaching fellowship at the University of Miami School of Architecture and complements his practice as a Lecturer and Guest Critic. His work has received various national and international awards.

contact

Patrick Reuter Architecture ETH SIA

Erlenstrasse 80a, 4058 Basel, Switzerland

151SE 1st St., Suite 3110, Miami FL 33131, United States

+41 78 870 9787 (Switzerland)

+1 786 477-9377 (United States)

E-Mail

JOBS

PR A welcomes applications to join the studio. To apply for a job please send a cover letter, a CV and a selection of your work (not exceeding 10MB). We thank you for your interest in joining the practice. Open positions:

Architect (60-100%). Experience and Skills: 2+ years of professional experience, excellent design and presentation skills, experience working on projects across all work stages, experience using AutoCAD, Revit, Rhino, Adobe/Office packages.

Trainee (100%). For a minimum of 4-months, and with the possibility to extend. Applicants are required to have completed at least 6 semesters.

Selected Projects

SBM

SONNENBAD ST. MARGARETHEN

  • year: 2022
  • location: Basel-Binningen, CH
  • program: Public
  • floor area: m2
  • status: Project
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter, Riccardo Amarri, Veruska Vasconez, Teymour Khoury, Peter Kiliddjian

The new Sonnenbad is a place for recreation and social interaction, and includes a variety of different all-year-round services. Its centerpiece is a natural swimming pool, located in the middle of a vast garden area with a valuable population of trees. The circular pool includes a swimmer and non-swimmer area and a surrounding pond for biological water filtration and treatment. The pool is complemented by open and covered recreation areas, changing rooms, a restaurant and a kiosk, an event hall and a youth center, a sauna with a relaxation zone, and a small maintenance area. The existing buildings date back to the early 20th century and were built at a time when public and group hygiene and health awareness became important. The latter are now at the end of their life cycle, hence replaced and complemented by a modular wooden structure. The linear historical layout and its enclosed outdoor areas are incorporated and further developed. The architecture is reduced to a structure that may serve as the origin for multifaceted and diverse places, moods and associations. The structure can be sometimes stronger or sometimes weaker and should be able to adapt to the needs and the times. This new place is characterized by interplay between framing and permeability, between closeness and expansion, eventually between fragility and resilience.

CEC

CHANCE ENCOUNTER: A BREATH OF PERMANENCE

  • year: 2021
  • location: Zurich, CH
  • program: Culture
  • floor area: 207 m2
  • status: Competition
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter, Veruska Vasconez, Peter Kiliddjian, Nils Havelka, Andreas Bayer WMM Engineers AG

The pavilion lies at the base of a protective earthen wall that grows up out of the park landscape and holds the spatial concept in the center of which it defines a freely playable inner courtyard. Only this explosive expression of the great urban dynamism allows the space to reveal its versatility and playability. The simple transformation of the topography becomes the architecture. Fully embedded in the terrain, the pavilion is an integral part of the park. The round hill embodies constancy and continuity. Seasonally, the inner courtyard is given a light roof, a breathing social body. There it is heaviness and permanence, here it is lightness and inconstancy. In this way, the enclosed circular courtyard is expanded by the idea of a year-round playable courtyard. Almost invisible during the day, it exposes soft lantern light at night. The earth wall is opened towards the city with a puncture and fanned out towards the park in such a way that the green space is invited into the courtyard and, through its stepped form, serves as an inviting seat on the park shell.

CSS

THE RED BUILDING AND THE GREEN MACHINE: CHANCELLERY OF SWITZERLAND IN SINGAPORE

  • year: 2019
  • location: Singapore
  • program: Office
  • floor area: 1950 m2
  • status: Competition
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter, Veruska Vasconez

The new building will be extended around a new main body, which naturally seems to hover over the existing building. Between the new and the existing structures, the greenhouse, which stands for innovation and sustainability, will be introduced as median layer. The interpolated mezzanine is visually drawn back, whereas the structure of the upper floor displays an accentuated exteriorized design. The upper floor assimilates the structure of the existing building, supporting itself on it. The concept is clearly legible and comprehensible, representing transparency and candor. Air pollution and smog are a severe problem in Singapore. Singapore is committed to the urbanistic purpose of connecting the natural, tropical environment with the tree population, for which reason the cityscape is dominated by street trees, greenspaces, parks and façade greenery. The blueprints for the swiss chancellery aim to reflect this actual climate change policy and achieve a technical, architectural and innovative building. The greenhouse is the lungs of the building, stretching between the new and old sections of the structure, and ensures a natural air purification process through interior greenery. The air will be filtered through the greenhouse, which virtually serves as an oxygen reserve, and the plants spread the purified oxygen with greatly reduced levels of carbon dioxide through the ventilation systems in each area of the house. The severely polluted air will naturally be cleansed.

HIR

HOUSE IN RIEHEN: INTERFERENCE AND DEPENDENCY

  • year: 2016
  • location: Riehen, CH
  • program: Private
  • floor area: 297 m2
  • status: Built
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter, Lukas Raeber, Camille Schneider, Gilbert Santini, Andreas Bayer WMM Engineers AG, Roland Hürzeler, Thomas Müller Hürzeler Holzbau AG, Robert Schnetzer, Beni Wasmer Huber Straub AG, Beat Joss, Ehrsam und Partner AG, Eik Frenzel Photography

The horizontal building structure is thoughtfully embedded into the contours of the hillside; the transition from the interior to the exterior is seamless and fluid. The narrow retaining walls bordering the residence and the enveloping yard give shape to a courtyard setting and preserve the palpable feel of the sloping terrain. A set of steps delineates the spatial flow of the interiors from entryway to the living, dining, and kitchen areas, picking up on the character of the descending outdoor terrain. The floor, fireplace, and two exterior load-bearing shear walls are made of concrete. A homogeneous structure, seemingly cast in one piece, encases the living room and serves as the foundation to the overlying wood construction. A solid wood construction consisting of four exterior sheer walls and two transverse walls forms the structure of the overlying story, where the bedrooms are located. The wood construction is left exposed to the interior, while glass and metal surfaces form a weather barrier on the exterior. The wood structure rests on two vertical concrete shear walls, cantilevering to the front and back. It is stabilized by way of cross-bracing steel tension bars on the east- and west-facing windows that hold the two wooden shear walls together. The ceiling on the ground floor is hung front to back by way of tension rods attached to the two transverse steel roof beams. The concrete construction on the ground level and the wood construction on the upper level interlock at two key junctions: the transverse concrete wall balanced over the fireplace forms the rear wall of the upstairs master bedroom and concrete bathtub; on the opposite side by the staircase, the wood construction runs through to the ground level. Two differing construction methods join in mutual dependency. What emerges is a static balancing act that unleashes an energetic, expansive sense of space and engenders an architectural language rich in associations.

CYH

COURTYARD HOUSE: SEQUENCE AND CONTOUR

  • year: 2019
  • location: Riehen, CH
  • program: Residential
  • floor area: 290 m2
  • status: Project
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter, Veruska Vasconez

The house is planned on garden grounds in a quiet residential area with mature trees. Huge oak, beech and maple trees form the surroundings for the house, which embeds itself naturally and calmly in the space. It is the emphasis on the horizontal and the regular sequence of supports that give the building this calm and strength. A careful balance between mass and transparency, between supports and beams, and difference and agreement. A central corridor leads through the house, at the end of which there is a sculpture behind a window. The room sequence opens to the east or west side; only the last room, the living room, lies on both sides and thus has morning and evening sun. It is a meandering sequence of rooms that spans between the two courtyards, one of which extends down to the basement and naturally illuminates it. The circular openings interrupt the stringency. They are penetrations and thus an induced act of power, but nevertheless function as a relaxing moment as they break with the regularity. The circle is also found in the existing house with semicircular annex, which is located in the north of the plot, and creates a connection as a design feature.

BHA

BLUE HOUSE IN ALLAPATTAH

  • year: 2019
  • location: Miami, FL
  • program: Residential
  • floor area: 700 m2
  • status: Study
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter, Veruska Vasconez

The project is located in the industrial zone of Allapattah, north of Miami. In the immediate vicinity are warehouses, train tracks and rows of shipping containers and trucks. The property is a deserted, long and narrow remnant of almost a kilometer in length, directly along the tracks. Along with many cars and buses, the place is used as a laundry and junkyard, and there is a cubic blue house. This house and its materiality, color and dimension form the starting point for the architecture, which is defined by color, light and openness. A layering of offset wall panels placed in front and the steel supports on top of them create a tense structure and sequences. Particular attention is paid to the horizontal, which is very present and creates the relationships between the different uses.

HMU

HOUSE FOR A MUSICIAN

  • year: 2014
  • location: Basel, CH
  • program: Private
  • floor area: 610 m2
  • status: Built
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter, Lukas Raeber, Camille Schneider

An apartment building, built in the early 1900s in the Gundeldinger district of Basel, forms the starting point for the conversion project. The apartments on the lower three floors have been carefully renovated in the character of the existing building fabric. The top apartment has been converted into a spacious maisonette with the attic above. The extension moves within the existing roof slopes, only a dormer and a terrace to the courtyard form a spatial extension. There are different geometric basic forms such as the round skylight, the glass blocks, the built-in nested bookcases and the fish-bellied chimney, which in combination with the rich primary colors green and blue, refer to a recourse to the style of Art Nouveau at the beginning of the 20th century. Archetypal elements form the vocabulary of the design and, in the interplay of shapes and colors and light and shadow, lead to a playfulness and diversity of the space.

ACV

ACCELERATING CONVERGENCE: A GARDEN PAVILION

  • year: 2018
  • location: Basel, CH
  • program: Residential
  • floor area: 170 m2
  • status: Project
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter

The new pavilion nestles thoughtfully on the hillside of the former garden of a spacious artist’s villa belonging to the Swiss artist Hans Erni, which was built around 1950 in the modern style. A curved concrete structure that merges at the front and supports the roof becomes a design feature. The solution allows for maximum cross-corner views to the northeast and southwest, each with a garden and a view of a park. Behind the arched structure is a staircase that leads to the roof garden. The curve arises from two contentual moments. On the one hand, the curve is taken from the drawings of the artist Hans Erni, in whose work movement and animal drawings play a major role, thus creating a strong connection to the history of the place and the man. On the other hand, the curve is somewhat imported, because it can be read as a fallen pillar of the Palacio Planalto by Oscar Niemeyer in Brasilia, also created in the 1960s. The form is legitimized in its content in many ways and is furthermore the most coherent architectural solution for bringing the loads together rather than being vertically borne at the corners, where the views would be disturbed. The curve is both a narrative moment and a maximally reduced formal approximation of the load transfer and gives the architecture a strong attraction, harmony and tension.

RET

RIGID CLAMPING: A ROOF EXTENSION

  • year: 2013
  • location: Basel, CH
  • program: Housing
  • floor area: 130 m2
  • status: Built
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter, Lukas Raeber, Hürzeler Holzbau AG

The roof extension has been constructed using prefabricated wood elements. The upper floor of the two-story rooftop apartment has been inserted between two sidewalls that span 9 meters from the firewall of one neighboring house to the other, forming a bridge-like element that serves a key structural role. They allow for an open, column-free floor plan and support the roof like two oversized center purlins. A narrow, longitudinally oriented staircase with closely spaced vertical slats connects the two levels. On the upper level, conceived as a house within a house, is a bedroom. Directly below are the main living area, kitchen, bathroom, and an enclosed room. The design of the structure and the useable surface area on the second floor allow for the ceiling of the living area to extend on both sides to the upper level. Penetrating the sidewalls and containing built-in components for books, the windows emanate a reinforcing quality. The chrome window reveals reflect a high degree of light, contrasting with the darkly varnished structural spruce wood construction.

MBH

MUSEUM OF BAVARIAN HISTORY: A CITY FRAGMENT

  • year: 2013
  • location: Regensburg, DE
  • program: Culture
  • floor area: 8500 m2
  • status: Competition
  • team:

    Patrick Reuter, Christoph Reichen, Lukas Raeber, Andy Schönholzer Westpol Landscape architecture

The new Museum of Bavarian History is positioned in a significant location on the Danube River in the middle of the city of Regensburg. The new museum building creates a poised impression, completing the previously unfinished city fragment. The working method lies in viewing the building volumes of the city as a single mass out of which empty spaces can be cut. The resulting figure-ground relationship between built and spatial forms leads to a textured structure of buildings and volumes. The main entrance is on the important Danube façade of the new building. Having entered the museum, the visitor arrives directly into a generous foyer. Attached to this, and arranged around the central courtyard, are spaces for temporary exhibitions or events. The ‘Bayernhimmel’ or Bavarian Sky is the final space and it creates the zenith of the exhibition. The basic form of the Bayernhimmel room is cuboid and it can therefore be flexibly used. Nonetheless, it possesses an important singularity, for the room is surrounded and accentuated by a further spatial level. This pared-back zone consists of two opposing staircases that lead to a common destination from where the visitor enjoys a wonderful view of the old city, the Danube and the cathedral. From the exterior, the opening in the façade appears as a fresh interpretation of a classical frieze. The opposing staircases both shift the height level and represent a sequence of interior to exterior, past to present. The city and its architecture and structure are understood as the theatre of daily life. The Bayernhimmel is a grandstand from which a view of our city stage is revealed, as well as the meeting point between the museum world within and the contemporary world outside.

Publications year type authors
Photo series: Grenzen/ Borders, Europäischer Architekturfotografie-Preis Year: 2016 Type: Photography Authors: Patrick Reuter
Light and heavy, a report on a built vision of Brazilian modernity Year: 2013 Type: Essay Authors: Patrick Reuter
Photo series: Brazilian Modernism – Architecture by Artigas Vilanova, Afonso Reidy, Oscar Niemeyer Year: 2013 Type: Photography Authors: Patrick Reuter
There is no there there, Urbanism in the Periphery Year: 2012 Type: Diploma Booklet Authors: Professor Marc Angélil, Patrick Reuter, Thomas Wyssen
Yearbooktext ETH Zurich, Professor Marc Angélil Year: 2012 Type: Text Authors: Professor Marc Angélil, Patrick Reuter
Academic year position subjects
U-SoA, University of Miami, School of Architecture Year: 2020/ 2021 Position: Adjunct Professor Subjects:

Gowanus Canal NYC, Housing and the City, Design Studio with Allan Shulman

Sculpted Landscapes, Seminar

More with Less, Barranquilla, Design Studio with Adib Cure

Secondary City, Design Studio with Allan Shulman

Miami Underground, Overground, Grounded, Directed Design Research

Architectural Design IV. BArch with Eric Firley

HKU, University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Architecture Year: 2019 Position: Guest Critic Subjects:

MArch Final Review and Public Forum

U-SoA, Rome Center Year: 2019 Position: Guest Critic Subjects:

Final Review, Professor Jean-Francois Lejeune

ETH Zurich, Department of Architecture Year: 2018/ 2019 Position: Guest Critic Subjects:

Final Review, Professor Marc Angélil

U-SoA, University of Miami, School of Architecture Year: 2017–2018 Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Emerging Practitioner Teaching Fellowship Subjects:

The Miami South Campus, a concrete presence and urban collective

Concrete Miami, Seminar

Design is to give presence, Currents 2017-18 Lecture Series, Symposium with Mauro Turin

ETH Zurich, Departement of Architecture Year: 2011–2012 Position: Assistant, Design Studio Professor Marc Angélil Subjects:

There is no there there, Urbanism in the Periphery, Master Thesis

Roh, Rauh, Robust, Architecture as Infrastucture:
Gotthard, Design Studio

Visionary Notations – Along the Line, Zurich West Hardbrücke-Altstetten, Design Studio

Achtung die Schweiz, Das Furttal, Metropolitanregion Zurich, Design Studio

Exhibitions year location
The City and the World Exhibition, IAA Year: 2019 Location: Athens, GRC
Built Dualism, Houses of the Year 2017, German Architecture Museum (Deutsches Architekturmuseum DAM) Year: 2017 Location: Frankfurt, DE
Exposition Trinationale, Maison Européenne de l’Architecture/ Europäisches Architekturhaus Year: 2017 Location: Strassbourg, FR
Werkschau für Schweizer Architektur, architektur 0.16 Year: 2016 Location: Zurich, CH
Konferenz: Schweiz – Räumlicher Stand der Dinge, SAM Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum Year: 2014 Location: Basel, CH
Awards year
The International Architecture Award, The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design/ The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies Year: 2019
Emerging Practitioner Teaching Fellowship, U-SoA Year: 2017/ 2018
Merit Award “Houses of the Year 2017” by Callwey and the German Architecture Museum DAM Year: 2017
Best Architects Gold Award Year: 2017
Special Mention Architizer A+ Awards for the Private House Year: 2017
Swiss Architecture Award, Arc-Award, Gold/ 1.Prize Year: 2016
Finalist The Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award Year: 2016
Nomination Swiss Architects Bau der Woche Year: 2016
Nomination Archithema: Der bester Umbau Year: 2016
Scholarship Erich Degen Foundation, ETH Zurich Year: 2013
Diploma Yearbook and Exhibition, ETH Zurich Year: 2008
Professional Affiliations
AIA, The American Institute of Architects, International Associate Member since 2019
Docomomo Switzerland/Florida, International committee for documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the modern movement, Member since 2016/17
SIA, Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects, Member since 2009

Website designed by Ronnie Fueglister and programmed by Lorenz Peter.
All site content is subject to work of Patrick Reuter Architecture and is only to be used and reproduced with written permission.

Privacy Policy

SBM
CEC
CSS
HIR
CYH
BHA
HMU
ACV
RET
MBH