Swiss architects generally practice architecture in the region to which they belong, building close local relationships as they do so. GNWA (Co-Principals, Cristina Gonzalo Nogués, Marco Neri, and Markus Weck) is different. Founded in Zurich by three individuals who had each left their respective homelands – Spain, Portugal, and Germany – at different times to move to Switzerland, the office has pursued projects across Switzerland through competitions, rather than practising from a specific regional base. GNWA seeks to establish a shared elementary architectural grammar that transcends region and era, and the architecture that the office designs is clear and simple. At the same time, it accepts the complexities arising from each site, programme, and so on. This simple structure thus derived serves as a frame for embracing diverse uses and communities.Editor
interview GNWA Co-Principals, Cristina Gonzalo Nogués, Marco Neri, Markus Weck × Kim Bokyoung
Kim Bokyoung (Kim): Cristina Gonzalo Nogués studied architecture in her hometown of Barcelona, Spain; Marco Neri was born in Portugal and moved to Switzerland as a child; and Markus Weck grew up in Hamburg after his family left Leipzig in the former East Germany. What brought the three of you together in Zurich to found GNWA in 2015?
GNWA: Marco and Cristina first crossed paths at EPFL in Lausanne in 2007, where they were part of the same studio team for a year. Cristina had come from Barcelona on an Erasmus exchange before moving to Zurich for an internship. Markus and Cristina then met at E2A Architekten in Zurich, where they worked closely together across several competitions, while Marco was gaining experience in Geneva. By 2013, all three of us had left our respective offices and begun collaborating independently, entering competitions together as an informal collective. That partnership crystallised when we won the competition for a new cultural and sports centre in Romont—a project that gave us both the confidence and the concrete workload to formalise our collaboration.
Kim: Given that a competition win was the catalyst for founding the office, it’s no surprise that most of your projects have been acquired through open or invited competitions—and that your work is almost entirely public architecture. What does that mean to GNWA—both the commitment to competitions and to public programmes? And how does it differ from competition culture elsewhere?
GNWA: In fact, all of our work until now has come through competitions—we have never received a direct commission. Competitions are important to us for several reasons. First, they are the primary avenue to public building mandates. We are drawn to larger-scale projects and to social facilities—schools, housing for elderly people, programmes that respond to genuine societal needs. For us, architecture is not only about form; it carries social and cultural value, and competitions are the mechanism through which we can pursue that kind of work.
The other thing that made competitions essential for us, particularly at the start, is that Switzerland has a remarkably open system compared to many other countries. As young architects, we were able to enter open competitions without needing to demonstrate prior references.
Beyond access, there is something we find genuinely stimulating about the format. It creates a productive pressure that prevents one from settling into their comfort zone. Each competition demands that you understand a specific cultural and political context, and through the architecture you propose, you have the opportunity to engage with that context—and hopefully contribute to shaping it. That said, competitions are expensive ‒ in time, money, and energy ‒ and they can be deeply frustrating. But we have come to understand that frustration is als...
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GNWA
GNWA (Gonzalo Neri & Weck Architekten) is an architectural practice founded in Zurich in 2015 by Cristina Gonzalo Nogués, Marco Neri and Markus Weck. Established following the firm’s first competition win for a cultural and sports centre in Romont, the office has since grown to a team of sixteen and carries out public architecture projects across Switzerland through open and invited competitions. GNWA pursues an architecture grounded in formal structure as its primary means of expression—rational and empirical, open to all, capable of accommodating contingency without losing its core.
Cristina Gonzalo Nogués
Cristina Gonzalo Nogués studied architecture at the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB) and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). She gained professional experience at BAAS Arquitectura in Barcelona, Graeme Mann & Patricia Capua Mann in Lausanne, and E2A Architekten in Zurich before co-founding GNWA in 2015. Since 2024, she has led a studio at the Haute École d’Ingénierie et d’Architecture de Fribourg (HEIA).
Marco Neri
Marco Neri studied architecture at EPFL Lausanne. He gained professional experience at E2A Architekten in Zurich, Sauerbruch Hutton in Berlin and group8 in Geneva before co-founding GNWA in 2015.
Markus Weck
Markus Weck studied architecture at HafenCity Universität Hamburg. After working as a freelancer at several practices in Hamburg, he joined E2A Architekten in Zurich before co-founding GNWA in 2015.
