Markus Breitschmid


Markus Breitschmid is an American architectural theoretician, architect, and the author of several books on contemporary architecture and philosophical aesthetics. His most highly regarded books are Der bauende Geist. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Architektur, The Significance of the Idea, and Non-Referential Architecture. His writings have been translated into Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish. Breitschmid has been invited to contribute to the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Architecture Biennale of Chicago, the Salone Internationale del Mobile di Milano in Milan, and the Triennale of Architecture in Lisbon. His work has been exhibited at the Galerie d'Architecture in Paris and the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.

Biography

Breitschmid was born in Lucerne, Switzerland on April 20, 1966. He emigrated to the United States in 1992. Breitschmid holds citizenships in the United States and Switzerland.
Breitschmid holds a military as well as a civil education. He completed his training as a Mechanized Artillery Officer in the rank of a First Lieutenant in the Swiss Armed Forces in 1988. Breitschmid received his architectural education in Switzerland, the United States, and Germany. He is a registered architect in Switzerland. He received his Philosophiae Doctor in engineering science from the Technische Universität Berlin, where he was the first doctoral student of the eminent architectural theoretician Fritz Neumeyer. Breitschmid's doctoral dissertation was reviewed by prominent architecture historian Wolfgang Pehnt in the leading German daily newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Breitschmid operates Markus Breitschmid Architecture LLC in Virginia.
Breitschmid has been a professor of architecture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University since 2004. He has held a visiting professorship at the Universidad de Piura, located in Piura and Lima, Peru from 2020 to 2022. Previously, among other academic appointments, he was the "2003 Visiting Historian for the History of Architecture and Urbanism" at Cornell University and taught at the University of North Carolina and the Catholic University of America. In 2016, Breitschmid was appointed to the diploma commission of the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio. He has been a visiting lecturer and critic at many universities, museums, and professional associations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
Breitschmid was awarded the American Institute of Architects Henry Adams Gold Medal in 1994 as a top graduate student. In 2000, Breitschmid was a junior faculty research fellow at the John Paul Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Breitschmid received a publication grant from the Graham Foundation for the Advances Studies of the Fine Arts in Chicago in 2007. In 2015, the Colegio de Arquitectos del Perú awarded Breitschmid with its honorary medal for his contributions to the subject of Modernismo Suizo in Lima in 2015. Breitschmid's research and publications has been supported by the public Swiss governmental grant agency Pro Helvetia multiple times. Breitschmid was awarded the inaugural Jacob A. Lutz III Presidential Award for Eminent Scholars for long-term, substantive contributions to research and creative scholarship in the field of art and design in 2024.

Writings on architecture

Breitschmid's writing concerns the aesthetic mentality of modernism and contemporary architecture. Among other subjects, Breitschmid has written books on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts on building, contemporary Swiss architecture such as the work of Pritzker-Prize laureates Herzog & de Meuron, Mario Botta, Christ & Gantenbein, as well as several important essay on the work of Bruno Taut, on Tectonics in Architecture, and on Theories of Interpretation. Between 2006 and 2020, Breitschmid wrote numerous books, essays, interviews, and other texts on the work of architect Valerio Olgiati.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Architecture

Breitschmid entered the arena of the international discourse on architecture by means of his doctoral dissertation Der Baugedanke bei Friedrich Nietzsche at the Technische Universität Berlin in 1999; it was subsequently published as a German-language book titled Der bauende Geist. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Architektur. Together with books on Nietzsche by Fritz Neumeyer and Tilmann Buddensieg, Der bauende Geist became the foundation for scholarship on the subject of Nietzsche and architecture. Der bauende Geist was included in Hanno-Walter Kruft's A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present for the revised 2013 edition. Breitschmid has repeatedly pointed out during lectures that his work on Nietzsche's ideas on building served as the foundation of his book on Non-Referential Architecture.

The Significance of the Idea

In her 2012 book Forms of Practice, the Romanian-British architecture historian Irina Davidovici argues that Breitschmid's thesis of The Significance of the Idea – the title of one of Breitschmid's books – is pertinent for all of the contemporary architecture of “post-enlightenment culture.”

Non-Referential Architecture

Since 2013, Breitschmid has propagated Non-Referential Architecture as a response to a contemporary societal current that increasingly rejects ideologies of any kind, political and otherwise. The first use of the term Non-Referential appears in a reprint of an interview written by Breitschmid in the Italian journal Domus. In 2014, Breitschmid published a rebuttal titled "Architecture is Derived from Architecture" in the Swiss journal Werk, Bauen + Wohnen, thereby responding to an architectural claim made by others that attempts to imbue meaning into architecture from the extra-architectural.
Breitschmid wrote the book Non-Referential Architecture, a treatise on contemporary architecture, during a sabbatical in Ithaca, New York, and in Blacksburg, Virginia in 2016 and 2017. The manuscript was copyrighted in the USA; the book was published in the original English version and a German translation by Simonett & Baer in Basel in 2018. The book has been published in new editions and several other languages since its first appearance. It analyses the societal currents of the early 21st century and argues that those currents radically differ from the epoch of postmodernity. Contrary to the misconception that the book calls for the abolishment of references in architecture, Breitschmid argues that non-referentiality does not mean that architects would not use references anymore but rather that architectural references have lost their semantic meaning. The book proposes a new framework for architecture and defines the seven underlying principles – 1) experience of space, 2) oneness, 3) newness, 4) construction, 5) contradiction, 6) order, 7) sensemaking – for a Non-Referential Architecture. Amazon listed the book as its best-selling architecture theory book in 2018.

Non-Referentiality in Architecture

The topic of non-referentiality in architecture has also been investigated by the American architect Peter Eisenman and the Venezuela-born Swiss architect Christian Kerez.
Kerez investigated the limits of referentiality and speaks of "non-referential space" as a quality of his contribution to the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2016.
In the same year, Eisenman points out that architecture has been moving toward non-referential objectivity for some time, in as much as the architectural form is increasingly reduced “to a pure reality.” Breitschmid writes that "non-referential architecture is not an architecture that subsists as a referential vessel or as a symbol of something outside itself. Non-referential buildings are entities that are themselves meaningful and sense-making and, as such, no less the embodiment of society than buildings were in the past when they were the bearers of common social ideals." One of the hallmarks of non-referential architecture, according to Breitschmid in an essay published in the Italian architecture journal Domus, is that each building exists for itself. Each building is governed by an architectural idea – and that idea has to be form-generative and sense-making. Breitschmid returns to a definition taken from his 2008-book Die Bedeutung der Idee/The Significance of the Idea when he states, "Non-referential architecture denotes but it refuses to explain or narrate and it leaves behind any vestiges of a theatrical mode of persuasion and propagation." Following Breitschmid's argumentation and describing the intent of the exhibition ‘Inscriptions: Architecture before Speech’, held at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 2018, K. Michael Hays argues that today’s architecture presupposes “not a particular meaning, but a specific kind of potentiality — a non-semantic materiality, a non-referential construct that can be developed into an actual architectural project.”

Collaboration with Valerio Olgiati

Breitschmid collaborated with architect Valerio Olgiati from 2006 to 2022. Breitschmid's books, essays, and interviews in such leading journals as El Croquis, Casabella, and a+u positioned Olgiati's work at the forefront of the architectural discourse. One prominent European critic called Breitschmid "Olgiati's Eckermann," in reference to the famed collaboration between the two poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Peter Eckermann, in which the latter significantly contributed to the critical reception and recognition of the former. Many consider Breitschmid the foremost expert on Olgiati's work and its most effective propagator.
The collaboration between Breitschmid and Olgiati ended in 2022 in a dispute over fees that Olgiati demanded for work on an architectural project in Virginia. Moreover, Olgiati used the terms "mentally weak" and "psychopath" in an address to Breitschmid. Olgiati filed a civil lawsuit against Breitschmid in the US Federal Court of Western District of Virginia that he owes Olgiati nothing because they never had an architect-client contract; b) that Olgiati produced a set of rudimentary preliminary project drawings only; c) that Olgiati did not even produce what is listed under §3.2 Schematic Design Phase Services that he never used any of Olgiati's drawings for his project that was built actually; and, e) that the project was simply a continuation of their 16-year collaboration. In August of 2022, Olgiati published a post on his Instagram page that shows a plan drawing of Olgiati's project and is labeled: "Markus Breitschmid together with local architects executes a distorted version of my design for the Manahoac House in Riner, Virginia." The Architect's Newspaper subsequently published Olgiati's post as well as a side-by-side comparison of plans and elevation of Olgiati's project and the new project designed by Breitschmid that was built. A judge ruled that Olgiati's statement was a non-actionable opinion. Court filings also show that, in addition, Olgiati filed a lawsuit for defamation against Breitschmid for $1 Million. As court filings indicate, the dispute of the defamation part of the case surrounds the question of architectural licensure and registration of Olgiati in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Public court documents indicate that the lawsuit was settled out of court on September 16, 2024. A United States District Judge ordered Case 7:23-cv-00352 Valerio Olgiati, Plaintiff v. Markus Breitschmid, Defendant dismissed on October 8, 2024.

Published works (selection)

As author

  • Der bauende Geist. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Architektur. Quart, 2001.
  • Can Architectural Art-Form be Designed Out Of Construction? Architecture Edition, 2004.
  • Nietzsche's Denkraum. Edition Didacta, 2006. Hardcover: Paperback:
  • Between Object and Culture, in: Wolkenkuckucksheim - Cloud-Cuckoo-Land - Vozdushnyi zamo. Eduard Fuehr, Cottbus: No. 2/2007.
  • Three Architects in Switzerland: Beat Consoni – Morger & Degalo – Valerio Olgiati. Quart, 2008.
  • Un’architettura che, in fondo, e ‘solo’ astratta, in: Casabella. Francesco Dal Co, Milano: 72/No.770, 2008, pp. 8–9; 107–108.
  • The Significance of the Idea. The Architecture of Valerio Olgiati. / Die Bedeutung der Idee. Die Architektur von Valerio Olgiati. Niggli Verlag, 2008.
  • El Inventorio Conceptual de Valerio Olgiati / Valerio Olgiati's Ideational Inventory in: El Croquis No.156, 2011.
  • The Architect as 'Molder of the Sensibilities of the General Public': Bruno Taut and his Architekturprogramm. in: The Art of Social Critique. Painting Mirrors of Social Life, Lexington Books, 2012.
  • Christ & Gantenbein. Around the Corner. Hatje & Cantz, 2012.
  • Architektur leitet sich von Architektur ab. in: Werk, Bauen + Wohnen, No. 9, Zürich, 2014.
  • Mais Além!. in: Valerio Olgiati. Indexnewspaper, No. 5, Porto, 2016.
  • Bruno Taut - Glass House at Cologne. in: Harry Francis Mallgrave, David Leatherbarrow, Alexander Eisenschmidt The Companions to the History of Architecture, Volume IV, Twentieth-Century Architecture, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., London, 2017.
  • Non-Referential Architecture. Ideated by Valerio Olgiati; Written by Markus Breitschmid. Basel: Simonett & Baer 2018
  • Nicht-Referenzielle Architektur. Gedacht von Valerio Olgiati; Geschrieben von Markus Breitschmid. Basel: Simonett & Baer 2018
  • Non-Referential Architecture. Ideated by Valerio Olgiati; Written by Markus Breitschmid. 2nd edition, Zurich: Park Books 2019
  • Nicht-Referenzielle Architektur. Gedacht von Valerio Olgiati; Geschrieben von Markus Breitschmid. 2. Auflage, Zürich: Park Books 2019
  • Architettura Non-Referenziale. Ideato da Valerio Olgiati; Scritto da Markus Breitschmid. Zurich: Park Books 2019
  • "Architektur der Berge": Bruno Taut. in: Thinking in Thin Air. Anthology of a Decade Engadin Art Talks, Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers 2020
  • Arquitectura No-Referencial. Ideado por Valerio Olgiati; Escrito por Markus Breitschmid. Ciudad de México: Arquine 2020
  • Ogni edificio esiste per se stesso. in: Domus. No.1054, Milano, 2021
  • Architecture Non-Référentielle. Idéé par Valerio Olgiati; Ecrit par Markus Breitschmid. Marseille: Cosa Mentale 2021
  • 비참조적 건축. 구상 Valerio Olgiati; 저술 Markus Breitschmid. Seoul: Hoi 2023
  • Theodor Cron. Stanze italiane / Italian Rooms. Cura di / Edited by Markus Breitschmid, Enrico Molteni. Rome: Quodlibet 2024
  • Ein Gefühl für das Gesamte - Un Sentiment d'Ensamble. Herzog & de Meuron, Powerhouse Arts, Brooklyn, New York. in: swiss arc mag. Zeitschrift für Architektur-Revue d'architecture. No.5, Zürich, 2024, pp.66-77
  • Built Sublimation. in: Christ & Gantenbein Projects I-III, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, 2024, pp. 167-173

As editor

  • Conversation with Students – Valerio Olgiati. Virginia Tech Architecture Publications, 2007.
  • A Modern Milieu – Julius Meier-Graefe. Architectura et Ars Series, Volume 1, Virginia Tech Architecture Publications, 2007.
  • Thoughts on Building. Corporis Publisher for Architecture, Art, and Photography, 2008.
  • K + N House at Wollerau – Valerio Olgiati. Architecture Case Study, Volume 11, Corporis Publisher for Architecture, Art, and Photography, 2009.
  • Olgiati. English Edition. Birkhäuser, 2011.
  • Seattle Central Library – Rem Kohlhaas. Architecture History Case Study No.15, Corporis Publisher for Architecture, Art, and Photography, 2013.
  • Architecture and the Ambient – Mario Botta. Architectura et Ars Series, Volume 2, Virginia Tech Architecture Publications, 2013.