Ryan Waller is a partner at Other Means, a Brooklyn-based graphic design studio working with architects, artists, curators, editors, institutions, and schools.
The new building for the City of Zurich Police’s criminal investigation branch, completed in 2021, was a house of art before it became a house of the police. For Other Voices, Other Rooms, an extraordinary art-and-architecture project, curator Adam Szymczyk invited international artists to engage with the building’s architecture and institutional context. The resulting works by Ross Birrell (Scotland, UK), Banu Cennetoğlu (Turkey), Zehra Doğan (Kurdistan, Turkey), David Harding (Scotland, UK), Hiwa K (Germany, born in Kurdistan, Turkey), and Daniel Knorr (Germany, born in Romania) were on public display in the building in 2021, before the police moved in. Only…