Long hair, face full of laugh lines – Karl Dudler doesn't look like he's 74 years old.

The secret?

"Good genes, move a lot, think positively," says the architect with a Swiss accent and smiles mischievously.

You often don't know if he's serious or just self-deprecating.

"I always thought I'd cut my hair short when it was gray," he says.

But he left it anyway, although he doesn't really shy away from change.

Rainer Schulz

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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In 1980 Dudler came to Frankfurt from Switzerland.

First, he was hired in established architects' offices - first with players and Märker, then with the working group that planned the state central bank.

On Saturday nights he worked on his own competitions.

In 1986 he founded his own office together with his brother Max and Pete Wellbergen.

But in 1992 Max and Karl Dudler went their separate ways again.

"We broke up and stayed better brothers."

Remained faithful even after many years

To this day they have a good relationship.

Max is building large projects up and down the country, Karl has remained loyal to Frankfurt and has been shaping the cityscape for decades with his residential buildings and a few commercial buildings.

"He plays the Champions League, I play the regional league.

But it can still be fun to play there.”

One of his first projects was the Black Café in Sachsenhausen on Schweizer Strasse, which is already history.

It speaks for Karl Dudler and the high quality of his buildings that many builders have remained loyal to him for years.

The publisher Bernd Lunkewitz, for example, who commissioned the Dudler brothers to convert the stamp factory in Sachsenhausen in 1987, hired Karl a few years ago when the listed power station at Westbahnhof became the Voltapark residential project.

The old oil factory in Sachsenhausen, which belongs to the Peter Paul and Emmy Wagner-Heinz Foundation, has been supplemented with Dudler residential buildings for years.

"I build with many, but not with everyone"

It is important to Dudler that he likes the projects.

He attaches great importance to ecological, social and regional aspects.

He just doesn't like working for "money-obsessed people," as he puts it.

"I build with many, but not with everyone." He relies on traditional materials, prefers to use bricks, and aspires to continue building the city.

"I don't want to put a supersculpture there." His goal is not spectacular buildings, but stately, beautiful houses.

Dudler seems a bit stubborn and cranky, but in a lovable way. Like a mountain man.

He grew up in a 400-person village on Lake Constance.

The father was a stonemason and renovated churches, "an artist", as Dudler says.

"I grew up between sandstone and artificial stone." At the age of 14 he finished school and trained as a draftsman.

He was actually supposed to take over the business, but ended up studying architecture at the technical college in Lucerne.

"Passionate Ostpark kicker"

Dudler was and still is very enthusiastic about sports. During his childhood he spent his free time fishing, soccer and ice skating and also won a few ski races.

He only hung up his football shoes six years ago, before that he was a “passionate Ostpark kicker”.

In Frankfurt, he likes the contradiction between a perfect and a broken world: "I feel comfortable in the opposites."

He employs 40 people in his architecture office, which has just moved from Sachsenhausen to the Holzhausenviertel.

But he is also often drawn back to his homeland.

After three weeks in Frankfurt, he regularly takes the train to Lake Constance for a week.

He renovated his parents' house there and likes to go out on the lake in a 100-year-old rowing boat to recharge his batteries.

He wants to continue like this for at least 20 years.