Biographical notes
Based in Basel, Switzerland, Manuel Herz Architects is an architectural practice that is embedded in research, and is operating on a very wide range of typologies, locations and scales, from the architectural to the urban and territorial. Its completed projects include the Synagogue of Mainz, an apartment building „Ballet Mécanique“ in Zurich with moving facades, and a social housing project with a kindergarten in Lyon. Presently under development are a hospital in Tambacounda in eastern Senegal, a large-scale residential complex comprising over 200 apartments in Cologne, a masterplan and Synagogue for the Babyn Yar memorial area in Kiev, Ukraine, as well as other projects across Europe and the African continent. Beyond the architectural scale, Manuel Herz has been active in furniture and exhibition design, as well as in urban master planning and urban research. His projects have won numerous international design awards, have been exhibited in museums world wide, and acquired into the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), amongst others. His office currently employs twelve people.

Manuel Herz‘s research focuses on the architecture and urbanism of migration. His book „From Camp to City: Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara“ documents how refugee camps can be places of social emancipation. At the Architecture Biennial in Venice in 2016, Manuel Herz curated and designed the National Pavilion of Western Sahara. His award-winning book „African Modernism - Architecture of Independence“ presents the architecture of countries such as Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Zambia at the time of their independence in the 1960s and 1970s. The parallel exhibition shown at the Vitra Design Museum is currently touring cities in Europe, the US, and Africa. He has also co-authored the book „Nairobi - Migration Shaping the City“ and the MetroBasel Comic, an urban study of the tri-national region of Basel.