Bernhard Hoesli

Bernhard Hoesli (1923–1984) was a Swiss architect and collage artist.

Hoesli was born in Glarus, Switzerland from a German-Swiss father and a French mother. He later moved at an early age with his family to live in Zürich. After graduating from high school with a mathematics degree he joined ETH Zurich where he obtained a degree in architecture in 1944.

In 1947 Hoesli moved to Paris, France to join architect Fernand Léger's team and later was accepted by Le Corbusier as an assistant. In 1948 he was sent to La Plata, Argentina to supervise the construction of the Curutchet House. A year later, he was appointed to take charge of the Unité d'Habitation project in Marseille.

Hoesli moved to the United States in 1951. He first joined the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin as a professor of architecture. It was there where he was joined by architects Colin Rowe, John Hejduk and Werner Seligmann among others to form the Texas Rangers group of architects. He then returned to teach at ETH Zurich.

In 1959, which Hoesli hails as the year Modern Architecture became teachable worldwide, many opinions on architectural instruction changed. In that year, the year of the death of Frank Lloyd Wright, his Guggenheim museum was completed, as were the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. At this point, Hoesli felt free to discuss the procedure of design with students through pedagogy. His design problems, which "were so formulated that the student had to solve tasks within a given framework of requirements and achieve precise results", were arranged by types. The types of problems were created in order to instruct the students in a specific skill through their own self-discovery with trial and error. Hoesli relates this process to the Socratic method, in which students are constantly faced with important questions and debates. When Hoesli began teaching architecture at the ETH in 1959, some of his duties included 'looking after' fifth-year students. At this point, Hoesli realized that most of the fifth-years had an understanding of design as being dependent upon a flash of inspiration rather than a building of design steps upon each other. These students completed projects that had no room for growth or adaptation, and they would not accept criticism or suggestions for improvement. Hoesli felt that this approach was counterproductive and set about changing the way the entire curriculum was structured. Also at the time Hoesli began teaching at the ETH, the design process revolved around different building types. Students would complete an assignment from a specific building group. "Design began with a garden house, then continued with a holiday home, family dwelling, then on to a multi-family dwelling, then on to a multi-storey block, school building and shopping centre, until at the end of the studies a church or theatre was ventured upon."

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