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Roland Rohn (12.11.1905 - 11.06.1971) became famous as an architect in Switzerland especially due to his work for several major Swiss companies.
The commissions were mainly for the factory and administration buildings in various locations. Additionally he won several architectural competitions
for school buildings already early in his career.
Roland Rohn studied architecture in the years 1924-1928 at the ETH Zurich. His teachers were Karl Moser and Gustav Gull.
After completing his studies, Roland Rohn worked as an assistant at the Department of Gustav Gull. From 1930 to 1932 he worked with Otto Rudolf Salvisberg.
At the end of 1931 Roland Rohn founded his own office. The first significant commissions were school buildings in a temperate style of modernism.
These include the primary and secondary school in Zurich-Seebach. He designed a cubic structure, which seems to float on supports because of
the recessed ground floor facing the courtyard. In the second half of the 1930s he built the Kollegiengebäude at the University of Basel and won the
competition for the district school building Zofingen. Already in the 1930s, Roland Rohn was therefore acknowledged as a specialist for school constructions.
After the Second World War he was able to pursue this mission. In 1939 he was appointed to the Swiss national exhibition by the chief architect Armin Meili.
He was responsible for the electricity pavilion at the exhibition on the left bank of the lake of zurich. In his work for the Section for the Electricity Pavilion,
he probablymade acquaintance with Theodor Boveri. Later he could develop a large number of projects for the Brown Boveri & Cie company.
After the unexpected death of Salvisberg in 1940, Roland Rohn inherited his office, contracts and clients. His unreserved acceptance for the work of Salvisberg
came to him as his own benefit. Additionally his ability and willingness to continue on what existed already and what was already specified proved to be important for him.
From now on, the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche was one of his main clients. The office grew after the war to more than forty employees,
making it one of the largest architectural offices in Zurich along with the office of Werner Stücheli. His close relationship with Salvisberg was mostly positive for Roland Rohn.
But at the moment when there were to occupy four new professorships at ETH Zurich, Roland Rohn was not selected.
1934 School Building Buhnrain - Zürich
1952 Administrative Building ABB - Baden