Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli practised at a period when the terms of architecture itself were under argument.
The record lists Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli as Swiss architect and professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich (1842–1930).
Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli was born at Zurich in 1842. His recorded nationality is Switzerland.
Industrialisation gave architecture iron, glass and the lift, and with them the problems of the railway station, the factory and the tall city block.
He is recorded as architect, university teacher and general contractor.
Buildings outlast their architects and usually their purposes, which is what makes the discipline unforgiving.
That the work was built in Switzerland shaped it: climate, materials, planning law and who holds the budget all decide what can actually be built.
Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli died in 1930, aged 88. The buildings remain, still in use by people who never knew the name - which is the particular afterlife architecture offers.
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