Anna Grichting is an architect-urbanist and musician. Originating from a Swiss mountain village lying on the Rostigraben, a linguistic and cultural barrier that separates Europe into the Germanic and Latin cultures, she was born in the frontier town of Geneva and spent her teenage years close to the boundary between Northern and Southern Ireland. She searched for her maternal roots along the Iron Curtain, in the transitioning divided city of Berlin, documenting and projecting the Berlin Wall during its falling. Today, she is researching the linear landscapes and divided cities along the East-West fault line, the rift and seam of the oriental and western cultures, in particular the buffer zone that divides the island of Cyprus and the capital city of Nicosia. Her interest in divided cities resulted in a diploma project for the Berlin Wall in 1989, an Advanced Masters thesis on the Reclamation and projecting of boundary zones, as well as a competition design for the new Parlement of Reunified Germany on the former site of the Berlin Wall. She has practised in Switzerland as an architect, urban designer and assistant teacher in design studios and urban theory, also organising field trips to Berlin and Cyprus. She is also interested in ephemeral projects as a way of transforming public spaces and worked for the mayor’s office in Geneva as a designer and project manager for a music and light festival as well as a an open air science fair. As a musician, she has performed with a cabaret troupe, a rhythm&blues band, several jazz trios and has toured and produced recordings with Border Meetings and Sufi Moon in Europe and Pakistan. Her interest in bridging sound and space resulted in a Sound Architecture project and she has composed and performed and electro-acoustic Compositions for spatial Sound Systems.
Anna holds a Doctor of Design from Harvard University, an Advanced Studies Degree in Urbanism and a Diploma in Architecture from the University of Geneva,Switzerland. She also has a Captain’s licenses for Sailing Vessels.
