Karl Moser

Curjel & Moser

Within Curjel & Moser, Karl Moser generally directed the firm’s Swiss projects. Robert Curjel focused mainly on residential and commercial work in Karlsruhe. Moser was also responsible for much of the firm’s architectural design. The practice completed public and private commissions in Baden. Around 1900, Curjel & Moser and Hermann Billing were associated with the Jung-Karlsruher Schule. Their projects included churches, schools, houses, commercial buildings and industrial projects.

Curjel & Moser won the competition for Basel's Pauluskirche from a field of 56 entries. The church combined a Romanesque-influenced central plan with extensive figurative sculpture and contemporary Jugendstil elements. Max Laeuger designed its stained-glass windows. This kind of collaboration with other artists was a recurring feature of Moser's architectural practice, with painters, sculptors and decorative artists often involved in his projects from an early stage. During a journey to England with Laeuger in 1896, he encountered the Arts and Crafts movement and the work of the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson. Richardson's influence can be seen in the round-arched forms of some of Moser's early work with Curjel, including the Pauluskirche in Basel. International exchange remained important throughout Moser's career, and he drew on contemporary developments in architecture in shaping his own work. From around 1900, Moser often contrasted compact exteriors with more expansive interiors featuring curved staircases and large halls. Between 1899 to 1901, he designed Villa Langmatt in Baden. The villa combined elements of the English country-house tradition and German Jugendstil with a modern internal layout. Its original interiors were designed by Moser together with Max Laeuger.

Among the firm's principal works were the Kunsthaus Zürich, the University of Zurich’s main building and Basel Badischer Bahnhof. At Basel Badischer Bahnhof, the reception hall was a tall, semi-circular vaulted space within the station's elongated plan. For the Kunsthaus façade, Moser worked with the sculptor Carl Burckhardt, whose reliefs were incorporated into the building. The Kunsthaus had a relatively austere exterior, while its interior used more ornament and elements associated with the Secession style. The interior also included work by Ferdinand Hodler, whose monumental mural was intended for the main staircase.

In 1908, Moser and Robert Curjel won the competition to design the new University of Zurich building. He adapted the university complex to its sloping site, placing the main building further back towards the Zürichberg and the biology building closer to the city. The canton sought a monumental building, but Moser adapted the design to the site. The University of Zurich building combined round-arched forms with references to Greek Doric architecture. Its central courtyard incorporated references to different historical periods. He also commissioned several contemporary artists for the building's decoration, including the young painter Paul Bodmer. The tower was not a dominant feature of the original competition design but was enlarged during later revisions. The completed ten-storey, 65-metre tower was Zurich's first high-rise building.

Independent work and modernism

Moser initially worked with historical styles. Around 1910, he began using more restrained and classical forms. His Fluntern Church, completed in 1920, was designed in a Neoclassical style. In the early 1920s, Moser and the architect Paul Ulrich developed a small group of houses on Rainstrasse in Wollishofen. The houses had simpler, more uniform forms than the earlier Jugendstil villas. Moser was also interested in contemporary Dutch architecture and exchanged ideas with younger architects at ETH Zurich.

St. Anton Church in Basel was among the principal works of Moser's independent career. It represented the culmination of his church architecture. Switzerland’s first church built with exposed concrete, the building left its concrete exposed on both the interior and exterior. The interior is a high three-aisled hall, with the central nave supported by slender concrete piers. The stained-glass windows were designed by Hans Stocker and Otto Staiger. Completed in 1927, it became an internationally recognised early landmark of modern concrete architecture. Its exposed concrete attracted both admiration and criticism when the church opened. The church was placed under monument protection in 1987.

Moser continued to develop the Kunsthaus after the end of the Curjel & Moser partnership. A rear addition incorporating a reading room was completed, while later expansion proposals remained unrealised. During the 1930s, Moser increasingly aligned his work with the New Building movement, and his later Kunsthaus proposals incorporated ideas associated with contemporary modernist architecture.

Beyond St. Anton Church, his Zurich practice designed housing estates with social facilities for Swiss industrial companies, as well as commercial buildings in Baden and Schaffhausen. His post office in Baden, opened in 1931, was later altered and expanded several times by Haefeli Moser Steiger, whose members included his son Werner M. Moser.

In a 1933 redevelopment plan for Zurich’s Niederdorf, Moser proposed replacing most of the historic buildings with simple cubic structures. Only a small number of monuments were to be retained. The wider plan included roughly 30 high-rise buildings. The Grossmünster, Rathaus and Kunsthaus were among the existing buildings that would have remained. Moser's proposal was influenced by Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin.