Frei & Ehrensperger (Zürich)

We do not primarily look for our role models in an abstract architectural history, but in life itself. It is the immediate life stories that interest us and influence our actions. We strive to find the motivation for what we do within ourselves and not to follow the trendy, fashionable trends of a majority. This doesn't always work in our increasingly hectic world. We need distance to be able to recognize; distance to our work, but also to ourselves. We need time to be able to digest what we have experienced. We have the great privilege of being able to choose our own mirror to some extent and to be able to travel. Travel offers the opportunity to better understand our own origins in the broadest sense and to question values. This happens through the agreement in the supposedly foreign, as through the contrasts in the supposedly known. We are not interested in the images, but in the processes responsible for their creation. The stories behind the image.

Over the years we have gathered what we have seen and experienced (travel experiences, buildings seen, books read, some of these stories are listed in the "Inspirations" link) into a kind of "building blocks" with which we design our buildings. They are the building material that we use differently depending on the task. No one can stand alone, they work in interdependence. Since they are not an actual theory, but building blocks, no theory needs to be dogmatically defended.