About me
Stephan Zimmerli is a visual artist, architect, scenographer and musician based in Paris.
For the past 25 years, he has developed a singular trans-disciplinary practice at the crossroads of Architecture, Theater and Music – with Visual Arts acting as a central craft, a connective tissue; his constant practice of Drawing is structured and ordered in hundreds of daily notebooks forming the basis of a personal Art of Memory, a “mnemo-topia” gravitating around specific themes: time, reminiscence, atmosphere, mental space.
A graduate of the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and the Ecole d’Architecture de Belleville in Paris, Stephan Zimmerli completed his diploma project with Peter Zumthor at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, working for several offices in France, Switzerland & Finland (Atelier Zumthor, Jacques Lucan & Odile Seyler, G+ Architects), before starting his own practice as a freelance architect focusing on projects merging sound, performance and space: “Doisneau & la Musique” exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris, “Klein Leberau” acoustic studiolo for singer/musician Rodolphe Burger, “Les Dessous” theatre café & performance space for the Comédie de Valence in southern France… Since 2005 he has also been teaching Architectural Design, “Atmospherical Image” and “Thinking With The Hand” courses at several European schools: University of East London, ENSAD, Ecole d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville & Rennes, Universität Liechtenstein, Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio.
In 1999, partnering with theatre director, scenographer and playwright Marc Lainé, Stephan Zimmerli setup the scenographic research studio “La Boutique Obscure”, designing over 90 scenography projects throughout France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada & Peru, before joining the CDN (national drama creation centers) in Valence & Caen as associated artist in charge of hybrid performance projects merging music, architecture and visual arts.
In 1995, with 4 other musician friends, he founded the folk-rock group Moriarty, playing double-bass, guitars and keyboards under the alias “Zim Moriarty”, composing and recording 5 albums plus a series of soundtracks for film and theater, achieving multiple gold-records with over 300’000 copies sold and performing over 800 concerts on tour for 10 years around the world, while also being in charge of art direction, graphic design, video clips and photography for their independent record label Air Rytmo.
Furthering the principles developed within the band and their label, since 2018 he also started collaborating in the field of contemporary art with Moriarty’s guitarist Charles Carmignac and his Art Foundation on the french island of Porquerolles, working on their visual identity, concept drawings & manifestos, curation and soundtracks for exhibitions, before designing the “Musée-Valise”, a mobile Wunderkammer project bringing contemporary artworks into hospitals & prisons.
Stephan Zimmerli’s work has been exhibited in London (Caravanserail & Sketch galleries) and Paris (“Par les petits sentiers” at the Carrousel du Louvre, “Echoes From The Borderline” at Galerie &Co119, “A Dess(e)in” in the nave of the Versailles stables), and has been broadcast into numerous publications and conferences. In 2024 he was selected as artist in residency at the Murate Art District in Florence, and at the Consulat Voltaire art center in Paris, to develop and exhibit his ongoing project, “The Studiolo of Exile”, bringing together Architecture, Scenography and Drawing to materialize and transmit the spatial memories of people living in exile.
