Hans Benno Bernoulli was a Swiss architect, urban planner and university lecturer.
Bernoulli completed an apprenticeship as a draftsman. He then studied at the Technical University of Munich and was a student of Friedrich von Thiersch, a German architect and painter of late historicism. He completed studies at the Technical University of Karlsruhe and later settled as an architect in Berlin, where he served as a lecturer at the Charlottenburg Technical University, among other positions.
In 1912 he was appointed chief architect of the Basler Baugesellschaft and thus also a member of the board of directors. He taught at the ETH Zurich and became a professor. Due to a scandal caused by the publication of his satirical poems, in which he criticized the financial policy of the state, he was dismissed without notice and stripped of his professorial title.
Bernoulli continued his work with Louis Léon Weber and Albert Bodmer, among others, and was active in Switzerland, Warsaw (Poland), Hungary, and Austria. The University of Basel awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1947.
With Silvio Gesell, Bernoulli was a founder of the Freiwirtschaftsbund (Swiss Free Economic Association) and founded the "Zeitschrift für natürliche Wirtschaftsordnung." He advocated social housing and fought speculation over land throughout his life, advocating its communalization: "Land to the city, home ownership to the private".