ern+ heinzl Architekten is an Architecture firm founded in 2000, based in Switzerland, and has completed noteworthy projects. The successful company, with its founders Christiane Ern and Simeon Heinzl, has won a Luxury Lifestyle Awards in 2022. The category and region of their victory is Best Luxury Public Services Architecture for DER Derendingen Mitte in Switzerland. 

Christiane Ern Architect SIA BDA, studied architecture at the University of Dortmund/D and at the Istituto universitario di architettura di Venezia, and Simeon Heinzl Architect HTL, studied architecture at the engineering school in Burgdorf/CH. 

ern+ heinzl Architekten embodies working in partnership and mobility. They live a partnership style because they value reciprocity and exchange – together with their team and with customers. The architecture office operates between the Swiss office and the Düsseldorf’s university in Düsseldorf. Thanks to this work premises setup, they remain flexible, able to move around according to the location and the needs of future users. 

For the ern+ heinzl team, architecture is more than just filling a space. They look at the space and the special atmosphere – not only in the interior but also in the urban space. They create places where people feel comfortable. 

The founders say that developing a new project is always a journey, and at the beginning, you don’t know exactly where you are going. That is the essence of design. Every task is something new and keeps confronting them with new questions. 

Ern maintains: “we are convinced that the search for new answers to new questions brings us all forward together. But looking ahead comes from an awareness of today and the place where we build and for who we are building. That is why designing the buildings of tomorrow is always an examination of the cultural and historical context in which they will arise in the future.” 

The winning project, entitled Derendingen Mitte, was initiated on the 8th of November, 2013, and was completed on the 4th of July, 2022. Situated in the city of Derendingen, the work is a new construction and extension of the village center with a school, kindergarten, triple sports hall, multi-purpose hall, auditorium, stage, catering facilities, office space, and parking garage. ern+ heinzl Architekten was solely responsible for the planning and execution of the entire project. 

With the new center buildings, the community of Derendingen wants to give itself a new middle ground by incorporating the existing buildings. Because of its urbanistic setting, it forms three squares of different quality. The new center is an open house whose aspects and insights are oriented toward the respective squares. Large cantilever constructions point to the entrances and invite visitors to linger: the citizen-oriented administration, the accesses to the assembly hall, and the foyer of the multipurpose hall face towards the large central square. The schoolyard spreads out between the existing school building, the multipurpose hall, and the new school building. The outdoor sports facilities and the temporary parking spaces flank the building to the northeast. 

The new center buildings can be read in three scales: the areas of use (multi-purpose hall, school, and administration) are readable from the outside due to the different materialization and give the large volume a scale appropriate to the location. Through the vertically structured façades in fair-faced concrete and glass, the building parts then enter into a dialogue with each other again and connect the utilization into a whole. A third scale level overlaps the second, vertical level by offsetting the window levels on the plinth floor and by suggesting window pockets with a horizontal ordering principle. 

ern+ heinzl Architekten says that when a literary work is translated into another language, using the correct vocabulary and grammar is merely a technical requirement. In order for the work to be able to be understood in its actual essence in the new language, the technically correct and, in particular, coherent rendering of meaning and atmosphere is required. 

Architecture also has a vocabulary, a grammar, and a syntax. And architecture has the ability to communicate with the place, with time, and with people. Like the literary work, architecture also only comes about through a translation – through the conceptual design that manages to bring the individual components together into a holistic language. 

ern+ heinzl always integrates sustainability into their projects along with implementing modern technical equipment and resource-saving construction. Heinzl adds: “we are not interested in short-lived trends, and our customers also look for sustainable values.” 

Learn more about ern+ heinzl Architekten at  https://ernheinzl.com/