HHF was founded in 2003 in Basel by the architects Tilo Herlach, Simon Hartmann and Simon Frommenwiler, whose personal, academic and professional track records are resolutely global in orientation. In its first two decades, HHF has researched and built projects in Switzerland, France, the United States, Germany, Montenegro, China, Mexico, Luxembourg, Inner Mongolia and Italy.
At ease in extremely varied contexts, the office develops projects that are the fruit of long conversations with clients with atypical ambitions: a stop-over for pilgrims, a children’s park, a collectors’ storehouse, a revolutionary temple reuse in the Balkans, an observatory and insect museum on the loops of the Seine, downtown retail centres and luxurious and appealing apartments and boutiques.
HHF architecture is a conciliatory practice of sorts, one that seeks to transform, not assault – one that manipulates what it finds to change the game and accepts the past in order to create a springboard for continuities. It prefers paradigm shifts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and it keeps an open mind regardless of what happens and what people want. In brief, it is not about empty gestures but instead a strong point of view.
Passage is the narrative thread in HHF’s projects. Everything proceeds from the sequence to be lived or travelled. Each project is a tool to amplify what is there – a landscape, situation or feeling – and thereby transform whomever it touches. With their teaching work at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the HHF founders try to pass this spirit on to the next generation.
“HHF — Unfinished”, the title of HHF’s second monograph, underscores the suspended character of any architectural venture: the design occurs in a moment outside of time, beyond the pedestrian stroll, beyond what was or will be – and hence wide open. And yet, this constructive approach is rooted in the observation of whatever is present and available. Seek a resource, of whatever sort! It hinges on this notion of economy so essential to architecture, which is read here as an imperative of relevance. Respond to a problem in the most pertinent way. Proceed by borrowing, adding, subtracting or preserving, in order to make the most of whatever is at hand. Do the least possible for minimum impact and optimal effect. Reuse what still has potential.
These maxims – the building blocks of HHF – are manifest in its Lichtstrasse project, winner of the Swiss Architecture Award 2015. They are evident likewise in HHF’s capacity to superimpose various scales in order to reconfigure terrains and connect the smallest to the largest element, the infrastructure to the superstructure – as seen with other awards, including the 2018 Swiss Steel Prize for the Poissy Galore on the outskirts of Paris and the 2021 AIA Design Award for the Swiss Consulate in Chicago.
HHF keeps developing progressive scenarios where we as architects can take responsibility by collaborating with other professions in order to build a better world. Driven by curiosity, exploration and research, HHF emphasises the use of the latest digital precision tools and innovative ideas in order create projects that are sustainable, resilient and flexible – often with functional spatial contrasts that excitingly complement each other. By amalgamating what has been with what is, by managing the legacy of a place while adding the power of innovation, we seek to create unique spaces, contextually integrating what we believe the future should hold.