Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich publication

NN Rektorat is based on lettering created in 1933 by Ernst Keller for the signage of the complex that used to house the Kunstgewerbemuseum Zürich (Museum of Arts and Crafts, now the Museum für Gestaltung) and the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts). A custom version is used for new signage in the building.

This custom version of Rektorat is also used for the book shown here. It’s about the re-restoration and conversion of the modernist building for the Allgemeine Berufsschule Zürich (ABZ, General Vocational School Zurich). Edited by architects Silvio Schmed and Arthur Rüegg and designed by Jean Robert and Kati Durrer, it was published by Scheidegger & Spiess (translated):

“Shoe factory” and “fashion joke” are just two of the nicknames given to the new building for the City of Zurich’s trade school and arts and crafts museum, which was considered revolutionary at the time. Today, the spacious building, which was constructed by architects Adolf Steger and Karl Egender between 1930 and 1933, is considered one of the few icons of Neues Bauen in Zurich. With its flat roof and grid façades, the school wing epitomises a modern ‘laboratory for industry’, where great teachers of applied art such as Alfred Altherr, Johannes Itten, Hans Finsler, Willy Guhl and Josef Müller-Brockmann influenced generations of designers and photographers.

In 2016/17, architects Silvio Schmed and Arthur Rüegg adapted the former headquarters of Zurich’s legendary art academy to the current needs of the Allgemeine Berufsschule Zürich ABZ with a sophisticated restoration and some innovative detailed solutions. This construction monograph provides an insight into the prototypical problems that had to be solved when adapting the building to current standards, presents the building in its historical dimensions from the perspective of monument preservation and paints a vivid picture of past and future life in this outstanding witness to modernism.