About

HHF architects is a Basel-based architecture practice founded in 2003 by Tilo Herlach, Simon Hartmann, and Simon Frommenwiler. Operating at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and cultural production, the office develops projects that respond to specific contexts while engaging broader spatial, social, and ecological questions. HHF’s award-winning work spans geographies and typologies, reflecting a belief that architecture is not a product of style, but of process.

Current projects include Starlette, a mixed-use ensemble in Strasbourg; Poissy Galore, an observatory and museum embedded in a landscape park near Paris; and Landskronhof, a residential courtyard densification in Basel. In addition, HHF contributes to the discourse of urban transformation in Switzerland through competitions and studies, such as the proposal for the new Bank for International Settlements tower and the Nauentor high-rise development in Basel. All works reflect the studio's interest in the overlaps between the intimate and the urban, the conceptual and the built.

With a diverse international team, dialogue is central to the practice. Each project begins with attentive observation and is shaped through exchange with clients, collaborators, and the site's fabric. Rather than proposing final answers, HHF seeks to create evolving and adapting frameworks, offering architecture as a medium for transformation. This approach extends across both design practice and academic activities.

Through teaching and research at institutions such as the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Faculty of Architecture at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the studio explores architecture as an open discipline that reveals potential, challenges assumptions, and constructs new narratives.

Selected Projects by HHF (20 MB)
Paperback “HHF Unfinished” (15 MB)