Alfred Roth

Alfred Roth (1903-1998) was a Swiss architect, an important exponent of the Neues Bauen movement. He was a disciple and assistant of Le Corbusier, into whose studio he was introduced by recommendation of Karl Moser, his teacher at the Federal Polytechnic ETH in Zurich. On behalf of the Master, he followed the construction sites of important works such as the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva or the two homes designed for the Weissenhof in Stuttgart in 1927. The cardinal principles of Le Corbusier's Modernism accompanied him throughout his life, characterizing his entire future architectural work. Another figure who had a great influence on him was the painter Piet Mondrian, master of De Stijl: from him he drew various chromatic suggestions that made Roth one of the most celebrated exponents of Modernism for the use of color in architecture. In 1928 he opened his own studio in Sweden, in Gothenburg, before returning to Zurich where he began working in partnership with his cousin Emil Roth. His most famous project dates back to this period, the Doldertal Houses (1935-36), conceived by the two cousins together with Marcel Breuer, a splendid example of buildings raised on pilotis as envisaged by the Corbusier verb. Roth was also the protagonist of intense associative activity: a member of the CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture), he directed the periodical Werk from 1943 to 1956 and published in 1940 the important anthology “La Nouvelle Architecture”, the bible of the nascent International Style. He taught in Washington, Harvard and above all at the ETH in Zurich (1951-71) and was also a designer, with creations now re-proposed by the Italian brand MisuraEmme.