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 3 FOREWORD 121 PETER ZUMTHOR
122 St Benedict Chapel
5 MILLER & MARANTA 128 Thermal Baths
6 San Gottardo Guesthouse 135 TALKING TO PETER ZUMTHOR
16 Villa Garbald Anna Roos

25 BUCHNER BRÜNDLER 143 SAVIOZ FABRIZZI

26 Casa d’Estate 144 Maison Boisset
32 Renovation and Extension of 152 Maison Roduit
Basel Youth Hostel
40 Apartment Building, Bläsiring 161 ANDREAS FUHRIMANN
GABRIELLE HÄCHLER
46 BEAUTIFUL BUSINESS 162 Finishing Tower
R. James Breiding
171 VALERIO OLGIATI
53 HERZOG & DE MEURON 172 The Yellow House
54 Natural Swimming Pools 178 Atelier Bardill
60 Ricola Herb Center
184 A CULTIVATED ORDINARINESS
71 DIENER & DIENER Irina Davidovici
72 Forum 3
189 BEARTH & DEPLAZES
81 NICKISCH WALDER 190 Criminal Courts
82 Base Camp Matterhorn 200 Monte Rosa Hut
90 Refugi Lieptgas
209 :MLZD
96 SWISS ARCHITECTURE 210 Extension of the History Museum
FROM ELSEWHERE
Niall McLaughlin 219 STUDIO VACCHINI
220 Sports Center Mülimatt
99 GION A. CAMINADA
100 Forest Hut 229 EM2N
104 Viewing Tower 230 Swiss Railways Service Facility

113 JÜRG CONZETT 238 CONDITIONS OF PRACTICE

114 Traversina Footbridge 2 Jean-Paul Jaccaud
FOREWORD
Francesco Borromini is widely known as an Italian
Renaissance architect, but he was actually born
in Bissone near Lugano in the Old Swiss Confederacy.
He began his career by following his father’s foot-
steps as a stonemason. Le Corbusier originally came
from La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small town in canton
Neuchâtel; his father painted delicate images onto
the dials of watches. Peter Zumthor, one of the most
revered contemporary architects, was born to a
cabinet-maker and started his career as a carpenter.
These examples highlight the relationship that
many Swiss architects have with craftsmanship and
their intimate knowledge of working with mate-
rials. It is this deep understanding of the physical
nature of making objects out of age-old materials—
wood, stone, glass, concrete—that shines through
the buildings of many Swiss architects, both histori-
cally and today.
Swiss Sensibility examines the rich and deep-
rooted tradition of architecture in Switzerland, the
sensibility of many Swiss architects and a perva-
sive culture of architecture. That such a small, land-
locked country has produced such wealth of fine
architecture is testament to this tradition. The volume
of work produced in Switzerland might not seem
significant when compared with larger nations, but
the resonance and influence of the work is con-
siderable. Swiss Sensibility traces the history of this
trajectory, examining the country’s architectural pros-
perity and the development of its many talented
architects.
Why is it that architects in Switzerland have man-
aged to achieve their standard of excellence? What
are the forces at play that have combined to create
the fertile ground for the discipline to flourish?
Switzerland’s intricate linguistic and cultural borders,
and the variety of its vernacular architecture, are
counterbalanced by its strong tradition of cosmo-
politanism. Switzerland has a large reservoir of small,
creative practices that support a sophisticated
culture of building design. This resource, coupled with
an excellent standard of architectural education,
high quality craftsmanship, and a tradition of open
competitions allowing new talent to emerge, are
all aspects that influence the production of architec-
ture in this country. In most countries the role of
the architect has been diminished, whereas in Switzer-
land architects still tend to have authorship of
their work; steering their designs from the sketch
stage all the way through to the finished building.
3
Building in Switzerland’s alpine topography
poses a significant challenge but, at the same time,
forces architects to think three-dimensionally
from the onset. Though one can’t talk of a Swiss style
per se, what is evident is a certain understatement
and a strong sense of belonging with the context.
The extreme weather impacts on detailing; keeping
the icy cold out and the heat inside is vital to
survival. Additionally, there are not many natural
resources like oil and steel in Switzerland, so
architects have had to be innovative and use the
natural resources they have had at their disposal in
abundance: stone and wood.
If the definition of sensibility is having an acute
awareness and responsiveness, then the archi-
tecture presented in this book shows in myriad ways
Swiss architects’ keen sensitivity to their envi-
ronment and history, whether it be the restrained
renovation of an old farmhouse in Ticino or a
bold new sports center in Windisch; multistory apart-
ment building in Basel city or a museum in Flims
village. Buildings, both large and small, each display
the architect’s attention to detailing and material,
beautiful craftsmanship and precise construction.
The chosen kaleidoscope of buildings—all designed
by Swiss architects and built in Switzerland
during the past few decades—is intended to inspire
the reader and to convey the admiration shared
by many. Each project is examined with the aid of
texts, photographs, and drawings. Twenty-five
projects from across the country by fifteen architec-
tural practices are interspersed with four essays
by prominent intellectuals—three of whom are archi-
tects—and an interview with a distinguished archi-
tect. Each text focuses on a different aspect of
Swiss architecture: James Breiding looks at the his-
toric development of architecture over the centuries,
Niall McLaughlin critically examines the phenom-
enon of Swiss architecture from the perspective of a
“pure outsider,” Irina Davidovici looks at the cultural
models on which the production of contemporary
architecture in Switzerland is based, while Jean-Paul
Jaccaud scrutinizes the conditions of practice in
Switzerland, comparing and contrasting them with
Anglo-Saxon countries. The interview at the heart
of the book gives the reader a fascinating insight into
the intensely personal design process of the emi-
nent architect, Peter Zumthor.
Swiss Sensibility is not about promoting a brand,
but rather sets out to illustrate the broad approach
to a highly valued discipline. The book is an explo-
ration of the difference and uniqueness that gives
this small country its great architectural reputation
and pays homage to architecture produced with
dedication, passion, and integrity.
Anna Roos
MILLER & MARANTA

My incentive to pick up a pencil in the morning at all,

is the search for knowledge.
Quintus Miller

5
MILLER & MARANTA
SAN GOTTARDO GUESTHOUSE
GOTTHARD PASS
2008–2010
For thousands of years the Gotthard Pass has been
an important threshold between north and south
Europe and for many centuries has played a signifi-
cant role in the economy and culture of central
Switzerland. Since the early thirteenth century, the
pass has been a vital trade route connecting different
cultures and language regions. Caravans of mer-
chants transporting grain, wine, rice, and salt, even
entire armies trekked over the pass. During the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Gotthard
Pass was imbued with an almost mythological status
symbolizing the independence of Switzerland.
Thus, as Alpentransversale, the pass is strategically,
culturally, and historically significant.
At the summit of the Gotthard Pass is a scattering
of buildings between two lakes; these include the
old lodgings—now a museum—and Hotel St Gotthard.
Archaeological artifacts indicate the presence of
a chapel on the site since pre-Roman times, while the
hostel, alongside the chapel, has been dated to the
year 1623. The two buildings have a history of misfor-
tune: first they were destroyed by an avalanche in
1774 and then again by fire in 1905. Each reconstruc-
tion left a layer of history.
Thanks to support by the Fondazione Pro San
Gottardo, the revitalization and refurbishment of the
structures was made possible. Six architectural
practices were invited to take part in a competition.
Basel-based office, Miller & Maranta was awarded
the commission in 2005. As design professor
at Mendrisio Academy of Architecture in Ticino,
Quintus Miller, with his partner Paola Maranta, play
an important role in the architectural discourse in
Switzerland. Their work was showcased at the Venice
Biennale in 2012.
6
Having asked themselves how a contemporary
building might be constructed on the basis of a
vernacular construction typology, the architects drew
their inspiration from rural buildings in canton Uri,
where timber has been used within massive walls
since the fifteenth century. With great sensibility
they had to strike a balance between remaining true
to the historic meaning of the building, while also
acknowledging the present and creating a striking
contemporary building. Their first strategy was
to radically hollow out the building, leaving only the
outer walls, with their elegant, double-bowed win-
dows, and the granite stair on the first level. Secondly,
the building was raised by a level and finally the
chapel and hostel were unified beneath an enormous
lead roof. By raising the building by one level
more rooms could be accommodated and the volume
could become more prominent, thus creating an
optical focus on the Alp. It is the slender bell-tower
that divides the great faceted volume into two parts:
sacred/secular, chapel/hostel. The muted coarse
plaster and gray lead roof echo the color of the craggy
rocks surrounding the building and blend it into
the landscape.
Logistically the construction of the building
posed a daunting challenge, as there is only a short
window of snow-free time during summer when
construction is viable. This constraint required inno-
vative thinking and meticulous planning. To radically
reduce in-situ construction time, the large timber
cladding elements for the interiors were assembled
in the valley below and hauled up the mountain
where they could be rapidly installed. Clad entirely
with untreated, spruce wood, the individual rooms
throughout have an almost monastic atmosphere
intended to intensify one’s perception of the majestic
and austere surrounding landscape. The precision
of the carpentry is truly admirable. With the joinery,
time-old vernacular Alpine architecture has been
interpreted in an intensely modern manner. At the
same time, the wood-scented rooms still evoke
an atmosphere of archaic beauty. It is the perfectly
meted understatement one often sees in Swiss
architecture that gives it its force. Each room has been
named after previous distinguished visitors to
the hostel from past eras: Goethe, Honoré de Balzac,
and Petrarch to name a few. Nowadays the rooms
cater for a new age of tourists: alpine cyclists and
mountaineers.
Architecturally, it is the monumental south front
and the monolithic lead roof that have the greatest
visual impact. Miller & Maranta has rejuvenated
the building and elevated its status as is fitting for
its historic and strategic significance on the Gotthard.
Standing proud, facing southward, the building
has a sense of self-evident belonging to the site, as
if it had never been any different. The architecture is
restrained, but it is also powerful.
 For years this adage has accompanied us:
“Tradition doesn’t mean preserving the ashes, but rather
keeping the fires burning.”
Miller & Maranta

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15
MILLER & MARANTA
VILLA GARBALD
CASTASEGNA
2004
Quintus Miller and Paola Maranta play a central
role in the production and discourse of architecture
in Switzerland. Their approach to architecture has
been strongly influenced by Aldo Rossi’s theories of
Analogue Architecture absorbed while studying at
the ETH in the 1980s. Part of their education involved
analyzing ephemeral aspects of the discipline, like
the emotional effect that architecture has on people
and the atmosphere of a space. With their analogue
architecture, they sought to embed architecture
into its setting and promote the creation of a strong
relationship of a building to its context. According
to this theory, buildings should be ambiguous and
multi-faceted enabling them to be read in a variety
of ways, changing their function over time.
Miller & Maranta’s Villa Garbald is situated close
to the border in the village Castasegna in an
Italian-speaking valley in canton Graubünden. Dense,
multi-level farmhouses give the village an urban
feel. The guesthouse replaces an old hay barn and
stands above an elegant villa designed for the Garbald
family in 1863–1864 by the first professor of archi-
tecture at the ETH, Gottfried Semper. In 1955 the
last descendant of the Garbald family set up a founda-
tion, which was later able to recruit the Collegium
Helveticum to collaborate on the creation of a refuge
for intellectual debate and dialogue, spearheaded
by a competition held in 2001, which was won by
Miller & Maranta.
What makes Miller & Maranta’s building remark-
able is the manner of its construction and its
amorphous, crystalline form. The project starts with
a garden wall encircling the site, creating a private
enclave within. Inspired by Roccoli, or Italian
bird-catching towers, the six-story building stands
proudly, like an abstract, monolithic sculpture
in a garden. The tower declares itself as a dominant
form, set against the landscape and the sky. By
contorting the plan off the perpendicular, randomly
placing the windows, and expressing the surfaces,
the architects have enhanced the monolithic,
abstract feel of the building. The polygonal plan is
a continuation of the rustic garden wall and curved
walkways that meander across the site linking
one building to the other. The amorphous, angled plan
is mirrored in the articulation of the roof that kinks
up rather cheekily towards Semper’s elegant villa
below.
When we have to design a specific room, we begin
with its atmosphere.
Miller & Maranta
16
Rather than being built from bottom to top,
Villa Garbald is constructed from outside to inside.
The structural core is the fireplace around which
the staircase winds up from the seminar space on the
ground floor towards the apex “depositing” bed-
rooms as it spirals upward. The displacement of the
rooms and the constant shifting of levels are trans-
lated through to the freely floating apertures on
the facades. As the window frames are concealed and
are flush with the reveals, the openings read like
punctured bird holes in the four facades and empha-
size the three-dimensionality and abstract form
in-the-round. To echo the rustic texture of the
enclosing garden walls, granite from the Maira River
was added as an aggregate to the concrete mix
of the tower walls. To bring this aggregate to the fore-
ground, the concrete surfaces were etched with
high-pressure water in a process called hydro-abra-
sion; this requires highly skilled craftsmanship
to get a unified overall texture. This “assault” on the
surfaces, to create their rough tactility, heightens
the organic, rustic nature of the building, binding it
into the landscape and echoing the surfaces of
the garden walls and surrounding farm buildings.
Miller & Maranta has set up a sophisticated dialogue
between the new villa and its historic context.
Interestingly, the architects say that when they
design a specific room, they start with its atmos-
phere. Budget constraint was no obstacle but they
nevertheless managed to create simple, perhaps
spartan, but high-quality interior spaces. Meticulous
care was taken with the finishes—with the con-
struction of the broken-white, smooth lime plaster
walls and the carpentry of the doors, windows,
shutters, and furniture. With its raw surfaces and
powerful, sculptural form, Miller & Maranta
has created a new contemporary language for alpine
architecture using some of the deeply engrained
lessons on Analogue Architecture they learnt decades
ago in Zurich.
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BUCHNER BRÜNDLER

Switzerland is a model for the balance between

humans and nature.
Buchner Bründler

25
BUCHNER BRÜNDLER
CASA D’ESTATE
LINESCIO
2009 – 2010
Traditional buildings in the Italian part of Switzerland
are constructed with local granite and have slate
or granite roofs. In Ticino, there are stone footpaths
in the valleys that date back millennia to the era
of the Silk Road when traders passed from the Far East
to the West. The summerhouse, Casa d’Estate situ-
ated in the secluded Vallemaggia, thirty kilometers
north of Locarno, lay abandoned for half a century
before Daniel Buchner and Andreas Bründler turned
their attention to reviving it. From the exterior,
their intervention is all but invisible. A swivel glass
door, flush with the outer granite facade, and a
concrete chimney are the only hints of the transfor-
mation that has taken place within the 650-mm-thick,
200-year-old stone walls.
The decision to restrict occupation to the warm
summer months enabled the architects to leave
the stone walls untouched and do without heating:
a bold decision that freed the architects, allow-
ing them to forgo triple-glazed windows and radiators.
Every new element in the renovation is constructed
from concrete: the new window reveals, floors,
and built-in elements. Accessing the interior through
the roof, concrete was poured layer by layer into
the void between the rough stone walls and the lightly
textured timber formwork, creating a house within
a house like a Russian babushka doll.
26
The intermediary timber floor of the hayloft
was removed to reveal the full six-meter height space
where the open plan living and dining room are
situated. Folding timber shutters shut out the light
from two high south-facing window openings.
A fireplace sits directly on the concrete floor, giving
the space an archaic atmosphere when a fire is
lit on cool summer nights. The bath is not a tub; it is
a recessed trough in the floor, like a miniature pool.
Taking a bath in this bathroom must be a novel
experience. The showerhead extends high above and
arcs over the beam to spray down in a mini waterfall.
Recessed lighting behind the sink unit illuminates
the rough granite surface from below: a theatrical
gesture. In this way, the architects play with textures,
highlighting the sensuous surface quality of the
materials and heightening one’s awareness of the
spaces.
What is remarkable about this renovation is
its restraint; the architects have allowed the 200-
year-old stone building to retain its stature as
an enduring piece of architecture that has survived
over the centuries and will surely continue to
stand for centuries to come.
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31
BUCHNER BRÜNDLER
RENOVATION AND EXTENSION OF
BASEL YOUTH HOSTEL
ST ALBAN, BASEL
2009 – 2010
Youth hostels are no longer frequented solely by
students and backpackers traveling on a shoestring
budget. Nowadays, travelers of every age make
up a large proportion of their clientele. Although each
youth hostel is unique, they all have in common
an ambition to be sustainable and ecological, as well
as to provide a high standard of accommodation.
Swiss youth hostels frequently win awards for the
best youth hostels internationally as they are
well conceived, perfectly clean, and have high quality
architecture.
Basel’s youth hostel was originally a silk ribbon
factory built in 1850–1851. It was first renovated into
a youth hostel in the late 1970s. As the former factory
is heritage protected, any alteration had to be
sensitively undertaken. In 2007, Basel-based archi-
tects, Buchner Bründler won the commission to
design a new renovation and extension, which was
completed three years later.
Situated alongside a stream in St Alban, a pic-
turesque quarter close to the Rhine River, the
youth hostel is nestled among tall trees. Before one
even enters the building, Buchner Bründler’s inter-
vention can be seen; a delicate timber footbridge
links Maja Sacher-Platz to the entrance and merges
into a light timber walkway that leads one to an
enclosed terrace overlooking the foliage. This walk-
way forms a base held by vertical oak fins that
echo the tree trunks, enclosing and visually binding
old and new together, as well as filtering views
in and out of the building.
We believe in the possibility of architecture to
transform places.
Buchner Bründler
32
The foyer is generous and light; all service spaces
like the office, lift, stairwell, and seminar room are
situated against the slope, to the rear of the building.
Jean Prouvé chairs and tawny leather sofas invite
visitors to sit and chat. Wide steps descend into the
communal dining space, the historical silk dying
rooms, where dividing walls were removed to reveal
a series of brick arches that produce a rhythm of
elegant curves enclosing the space. The patterned
texture of the painted white brickwork creates a
subtle contrast with the off-white plastered columns.
A stark, folded steel staircase in an aubergine-
colored stairwell lends both an industrial and artistic
impression to the vertical circulation. Altogether
forty-eight rooms of varying sizes are arranged
in three upper levels strung along passageways termi-
nating in floor-to-ceiling high windows that bring
in light and views. Transparent colored peep-
hole openings in the masonry walls allow for fleeting
glimpses of activity within the rooms; a delightful
gesture that enlivens the passageways. The rooms
themselves have been constructed in a combination
of concrete and glazed plywood, while the furni-
ture is solid oak. There is a robust, direct use of
materials. Ribbon-like balconies extend the rooms
and create an exterior connection between neigh-
boring units allowing guests to socialize with
one another. Buchner Bründler has shown that it is
possible to enhance an old building with a con-
temporary extension and create architecture that is
functional and aesthetic in equal measure.
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BUCHNER BRÜNDLER
APARTMENT BUILDING, BLÄSIRING
BASEL
2011–2012

Facing the street, sentinel-like, this six-story apart-

ment building in Basel refers to the height of
other, taller buildings in the neighborhood, rather
than to the adjacent double-story houses. The narrow
site and the vertical proportions make the building
vaguely reminiscent of a traditional Amsterdam
grachten rowhouse; although it is rather more austere,
it retains its own contemporary charm. By stacking
the two, three-level apartments vertically, the
architects were able to optimize the narrow site and
retain a rear garden.
As the building is held between its neighboring
houses, so the rooms are also contained between two
concrete walls longitudinally like bookends. In con-
trast, the short facades are opened up to the street
front and the rear garden with floor-to-ceiling glazing
allowing natural light to penetrate into the deep
plan. The floor plan is organized around a service core
that houses the stairwell, kitchens, and bathrooms,
all seemingly carved out of raw concrete. The
fireplace, also concrete, juts out confidently into the
living area. The hearth is flush with the floor and
the wood is ignited directly on the base giving a gritty,
archaic feel to the space. The embossed grain of
the timber shuttering has been left visible, leaving the
material raw and untreated, reflecting the process
of its making. The lack of pre-manufactured fittings
like basins, baths, and shelves—which are all
cast in solid concrete—enhances the plastic, modeled
effect and highlights the elemental power of the
material. The use of honey-colored oak window frames
and cupboard door panels tempers and enriches
the stark, gray concrete wall and ceiling surfaces.
From the street, the facade displays a carefully bal-
anced interplay of timber, glass, steel, and concrete
surfaces.
It is not surprising that this project won the Archi-
tekturpreis Beton 2013, as it is an eloquent essay in
the sculptural use of concrete, carved and carefully
formed to model space. Buchner Bründler has mas-
tered a sensuous use of concrete, a material which has
played a central role in architecture in Switzerland
for over a century.

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BEAUTIFUL BUSINESS
Swiss Achievement
in Architecture
R. James Breiding

46
Why does Switzerland, a tiny, landlocked country, with most of its terrain uninhabitable, have
the highest per capita number of Pritzker Prize winners in the world? How did a country spawn,
in a short space of time such standout architects as Le Corbusier, Mario Botta, Jacques Herzog,
Pierre de Meuron, and Peter Zumthor with their landmarks defining cities throughout the
world? This essay examines those aspects that have led to Swiss distinction in architecture
and provides a brief survey of those people who have contributed most to Swiss achievement
in this sector.
The concept of a nation encompasses a myriad of endless considerations: his-
tory, climate, topography, language, religion, its balance between the individual and the com-
munity, the extent or lack of resources and wealth, its values and social norms; just to name
a few. From this interminable list, three attributes of “Swissness” come to my mind when
I reflect on what may explain the country’s remarkable contribution to architecture as we
know it today.
First, Switzerland has long been a nation that has thrived on openness. A trad-
ing post during the Roman Empire offering conquest to the north and protection to the south;
it fuels the source of the Rhine flowing to the south and the Rhône flowing to the north; the
two rivers that served as the commercial vertebrae of trade throughout central Europe until
the invention of railroads. Switzerland also served as a corridor for those traversing east and
west as part of their pilgrimage to, or from, Santiago de Compostela. Up until the nineteenth
century the leading export of Switzerland was its male youth, who were the most prized mer-
cenaries fighting in the ceaseless wars that marred Europe for most of its civilizations (to this
day Swiss guards defend the Vatican). All of this created a fountain of opportunity for the
exchange of ideas, talent, and technique. The Swiss traveled, met, learnt languages, married
local women or men, so they were probably more acutely aware of latest developments than
more provincial societies.
The second feature of Switzerland is its unique political framework. The basic
task for any political system is to mediate smoothly between competing interest groups and
power blocs in order to permit a broader public interest to prevail. History shows us repeat-
edly that there is a natural tendency for power to centralize. Most of history has been about
the formation, rise, and ultimate destruction of empires. Think of Egypt, Greece, Rome, the
Spanish Armada, Napoleon, Bismarck, or the British Empire. Switzerland is unique in that it
is built from the bottom up and is one of the rare exceptions that has managed to preserve
local and regional hegemony over central command and control tendencies of governance.
The Swiss have a sharp disdain for centralized power of any kind. Professor Harold James, of
Princeton, once told me that Swiss cities like Basel, Geneva, Lucerne, Neuchâtel, St Gallen,
and Zurich still resemble medieval city-states, with local dialects, customs, considerable
autonomy, and a meritocratic attitude towards achievement of recognition. This is relevant to
architecture because it has long provided an abundant and diverse source of commissions for
aspiring Swiss architects. There are 26 cantons and 2,249 communes, each with budgets to
render commissions and ambitious architects wishing to outdo one another. Collectively it is
a laboratory for architectural experiment and individually a dream for any budding architect.
A particular combination of precision and frugality is the second characteris-
tic of Swiss architecture. Calvin and Zwingli, two of the most influential protagonists of
the Protestant reformation, came from Switzerland. For more than 1,000 years, the Catholic
Church dominated the minds and hearts of people. Most commissions issued by the Church
or monarchies were assigned on the basis of an architect’s talent for veneration and artistic
aesthetics. Those mandating were looking for the superlative: the most grandiose, the most
ostentatious, the most imaginative. Calvinism precluded its members from partaking in such
contests, or even professions. To distinguish oneself, one’s work was only considered supe-
rior if it was more efficient, more resistant, of superior engineering, or other forms of mea-
surable improvement. From these beginnings emerged a particular attention to materials,
detail, and functionality that continues to manifest itself today. There is a famous expres-
sion in German “mehr sein als scheinen” (more substance than appearance)—which seems
to be an intricate part of the Swiss DNA—whether it is a watchmaker in Le Locle, a turbine
manufacturer at ABB, or an architect at Herzog & de Meuron.

47
 Reliability and trustworthiness are the final factors that come to mind. Living
in the mountains is characterized by considerable uncertainty. Avalanches or floods can wipe
out valleys; adverse weather can isolate people for weeks at a time and poor conditions can
impact harvests needed to see villages through the winter. Because of this, the Swiss tend
to be cautious people and prone to building not for day-to-day life, but for those rare, but in-
evitable calamities. Reliability is measured during times of hardship, not under fair weather
conditions. And from reliability, comes trust. Architectural budgets can amount to large sums
of money and are often funded by taxpayers. Meeting budgets and finishing on time may not
always be a decisive criterion, but it can provide an edge.
Having looked at those characteristics exemplary of Swiss architecture, let us
now sketch through its historical development.

BALANCE, UNITY—AND BUSINESS

Both architecture and art dealing have become important parts of Switzerland’s economy in
a characteristically Swiss way—discreetly—drawing on the Swiss tendencies to build from
the bottom up, strive for balance and utility, and hold firm to an independent approach. Yet
the ambiguous relationship of many Swiss cultural figures to their homeland is revealing.
The sense that Switzerland is a somewhat stifling environment has deep historical roots. In
pre-industrial Switzerland, art and creative architecture did not easily find their place. In
contrast to its European neighbors, Switzerland had no princely courts with royal families to
act as patrons of the arts to enhance their power and prestige. Such frivolities were alien to
the Swiss mentality. Money—when available—was to be spent on sensible things. Not sur-
prisingly, the first signs of artistic flair in Switzerland manifested themselves in architecture,
where aesthetic values could be worked discreetly into a practical or religious design.

ITALY WAS THE CRUCIBLE

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the most important Swiss architects came
from south of the Alps in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, and their main destination was
Rome. One of them, Domenico Fontana, was the successor to Michelangelo as the chief archi-
tect of the Basilica of St Peter. Fontana’s nephew, Carlo Maderno, completed the Basilica.
In the final years before the consecration of St Peter’s in 1629, another Swiss architect,
Francesco Castelli, was working on the site. Adopting the surname Borromini, he made his
reputation with the Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, on the Quirinal Hill, setting
the Roman baroque style.
A generation later, another emigrant, Domenico Trezzini, left Astano near Lugano,
to make his career abroad. After the obligatory training in Rome, Trezzini found his way to
Russia, where the tsar, Peter the Great, appointed him as city planner for his new capital,
St Petersburg. For thirty years, until his death, Trezzini worked on the layout of the city and
constructed some of its most important buildings, including the Cathedral of St Peter and
St Paul and the Summer and Winter Palaces for the tsars. He also introduced a master’s
diploma in architectural studies there. In Switzerland it would be another 150 years before
an equivalent institution for training architects was created.

ARCHITECTURE IN DEMAND
Around 1800, the architectural profession underwent a profound change. The rise of a pros-
perous middle class led to a huge increase in the number and variety of building commissions.
At the same time, mercantile values and industrial production methods brought ideas of effi-
ciency to the construction site—clients now wanted to see a return on their investment
within a reasonable period. The planning and execution of prestigious buildings required
academically trained architects who could master complex logistics and were thoroughly
familiar with whichever architectural style was demanded.

48
 In the first half of the nineteenth century, Switzerland made scarcely any con-
tribution to these trends—architects acquired their training in France and Germany and
brought the current styles back to Switzerland. But the founding in 1855 of the Eidgenös-
sisches Polytechnikum, later the ETH, was a turning point. The recently established Federal
Government succeeded in bringing to the school a noted German architect, Gottfried Semper.
Along with his close friend, composer Richard Wagner, Semper had been involved in the May
uprising against the Kingdom of Saxony in Dresden in 1849. The revolt collapsed, and Semper
and Wagner had to leave the city to avoid arrest. Semper fled to Paris and later to London,
while Wagner went to Zurich. A few years later, Wagner used his connections to bring Semper
to the newly founded Polytechnikum. Semper was not only commissioned to design the school
buildings on a terrace overlooking the city center, but also appointed the highest-paid pro-
fessor at the new university. Semper believed that learning on the job should play an impor-
tant part in the life of an architect, and this approach has been followed at the ETH ever since.

A TIME OF LIBERATION
Thanks to the ETH and its appointment of Semper, Switzerland slowly began to become a force
in European architecture. This was a period of rapid growth in Swiss cities and architects re-
ceived many new commissions: for railway stations, theaters, hotels, banks, and central post
offices. The models for these buildings were found in the capitals of Europe, chiefly Paris,
Munich and Vienna, yet Swiss architects gradually began to offer interpretations of their own,
overlaying a characteristically Swiss approach, bringing a sense of what was feasible and
affordable. Gradually, a modern architecture liberated from traditional styles began to emerge.
With the appointment to the ETH in 1915 of a Swiss architect, Karl Moser, archi-
tectural training evolved further. Moser had spent time in Paris and Italy, and had set up a
successful architectural partnership in Karlsruhe, Germany, gaining an international reputa-
tion. He produced designs for the Badische railway terminus in Basel (1913), Zurich University
(1918), and the Kunsthaus art gallery in Zurich (1910). Moser exemplified the so-called “Reform”
style that developed around 1900, based on the idea that function, form, and design should
be conveyed in an indissoluble unity and that form was to be governed by utility. Clearly, the
Reform style had links with the modern movement in art. Swiss modernism was marked by the
practical philosophy of toleration that underpinned daily coexistence in a small, but diverse
country. At the same time there was an openness to trends from other countries; under Moser,
the ETH abandoned Semper’s “academic architecture” in favor of designing real buildings and
encouraging quality and craftsmanship.

THE IMPACT OF LE CORBUSIER

In architecture, the impact of modernism became fully visible in Switzerland in the first dec-
ades of the twentieth century. Karl Moser’s cosmopolitan realism influenced generations of
architects, who still invoked his name decades later. Perhaps the most famous protagonist of
this modernism was Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, who later called himself Le Corbusier.
He was born in the Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds and attended the School of Applied Arts
there. He was trained as an engraver and chaser, but soon switched to architecture. During the
First World War he moved permanently to Paris, where he established an architectural prac-
tice with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret.
In 1918, Le Corbusier met a Basel banker, Raoul La Roche, who was in the pro-
cess of building up an important collection of Cubist paintings. A friendship developed be-
tween the two men, which culminated in the building of the Villa La Roche in 1923. The house,
in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, became an icon of modernism and is still a place of pilgrimage
for architects.

49
 A RAGE TO CREATE THE NEW CITY
Le Corbusier’s ambitions went beyond building private homes for wealthy friends, though:
in Le Corbusier: A Life, Nicholas Fox Weber writes about Le Corbusier’s desire to “raze large
parts of existing cities” to build apartments that would provide better living conditions.
Le Corbusier’s vision of the modern city consisted of large, unornamented apartment build-
ings set upon pilotis (he was one of the first architects to take into account the effects of
the automobile on urban agglomeration). Though considered a pioneer of modern architecture,
he was not without his critics, including Jane Jacobs, who in The Death and Life of Great
American Cities argued that his buildings had a negative effect on social development.
Le Corbusier’s rhetorical talent, his aggressive and confrontational personality,
and his radical architecture stripped of all adornment quickly placed him at the head of the
avant-garde movement. With manifestos such as Toward an Architecture (1923), City Planning
(1925), and Five Points for a New Architecture (1927), he provided the fundamental arguments
for the “new construction.”

SWITZERLAND AND THE BAUHAUS

A crucial influence on the development of Swiss modernism came from the Bauhaus, an arts
and crafts school founded in Weimar in 1919. Throughout the 1920s, ambitious artists and de-
signers congregated there from all over Europe. On the staff from the beginning was Johannes
Itten, a Swiss painter and color theorist, whose teaching skill and charisma dominated the
school for its first four years. Itten, who had studied at a teacher-training college in Bern,
devised the foundation course at the Bauhaus, which was later adopted by many schools of
applied arts in German-speaking countries and to this day has a place in the curriculum.
In 1928, a Basel architect and founding member of the CIAM, Hannes Meyer,
succeeded Walter Gropius as director of the Bauhaus. Meyer set up a department of architec-
ture and positioned the Bauhaus, already permeated with political ideology, even further to
the left. In the conservative atmosphere of Dessau, this led to considerable tension. Under
intense pressure, magnified by the rise of the Nazis, Meyer was forced to give up his post
in 1930. He moved on to Moscow, but soon fell out with the Stalinist regime and returned to
Switzerland in 1936. Meyer had little opportunity to design and build, but he made an essen-
tial contribution to the development of architecture.

ARCHITECTURE AND WAR DON’T MIX

Unlike the art market, Swiss architecture was impoverished by the Second World War. The
exchange of ideas with foreign countries came to a standstill, and tendencies towards com-
promise and regional traditionalism became stronger. Only Le Corbusier in Paris remained
committed to the ideals of the avant-garde, and immediately after the war ended he achieved
an international breakthrough when the original design for the headquarters of the newly cre-
ated United Nations organization in New York came from his drawing board. Le Corbusier’s
language of form eventually moved away from white, hard-edged cubes towards a more
emotive, sculptural interpretation of concrete. With the chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut in
Ronchamp, eastern France, he achieved what many regard as his chef d’oeuvre, a place of
religious and architectural pilgrimage.

THE POST-CORBUSIER GENERATION

By the early 1970s, the canton of Ticino returned to the forefront of international architec-
tural practice, thanks largely to Mario Botta and a group of Ticinese architects later known
as Tendenza. Botta had studied in Venice and then worked briefly for Le Corbusier in 1965.
Five years later he set up his own practice in Mendrisio, Ticino, where the private houses he
built in the early 1970s attracted international attention. The Museum of Modern Art in San
Francisco, completed in 1995, and the cathedral in the French town of Evry, consecrated in the
same year, mark the high points of his career in the view of many critics.

50
 Botta is not the only Swiss architect to make an international impact while re-
maining anchored in Switzerland. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, both born in 1950, set
up their architectural practice in Basel in 1978 after graduating from the ETH. From the begin-
ning, Herzog & de Meuron has sought to bring their work close to art, often working with an
artist from the Jura, Rémy Zaugg. From this dynamic of artistic collaboration they draw a
stream of new ideas, both for conceptual work and for actual buildings.

INTELLECT AND EMOTION

Herzog and de Meuron are known as intellectuals, yet their buildings always arouse strong
emotions. In Basel’s main railway station, it is the central signal box, entirely clad in copper
strips, that made the architects known to a wider public. They broke through to international
recognition in 2000, when they converted the vast Bankside Power Station on the south bank
of the Thames in London into an art gallery for Tate Modern. Since then, major projects have
followed in rapid succession, the most famous to date being the National Stadium built
for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. In 2001, they were awarded the Hyatt Foundation’s
Pritzker Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize for Architecture,” and in 2007 they received the
Praemium Imperiale of the Japan Art Association.
A different path to international success was taken by Peter Zumthor from
Oberwil near Basel, who trained as a cabinet-maker. He later studied at the Pratt Institute in
New York before returning to Switzerland, where he settled in Haldenstein and set up in prac-
tice as an architect; from there his reputation quickly spread by word of mouth. Zumthor takes
a lot of time over his projects, letting them mature in his head and on paper, and turns down
numerous lucrative commissions. This “slow architecture” as he calls it, is epitomized in his
thermal baths in the Graubünden mountain village of Vals (see page 128). Built in 1996, the
number of visitors has been so great that the management eventually had to introduce a quo-
ta system. Zumthor’s largest building to date is the Kolumba Museum of Art, completed for
the archdiocese of Cologne in 2007. In the two years that followed, despite the modest volume
of his work, he too was awarded first the Praemium Imperiale and then the Pritzker Prize. Her-
zog & de Meuron and Zumthor rank among the world’s most famous architects. However, their
success is based on two completely different models of thinking and working.

NO LONGER A LUXURY
This essay demonstrates that the influence of Swiss architecture is greater than the volume
of activity. Swiss architects build all over the world, and in the art trade Switzerland is estab-
lished as an important hub, along with New York, London, and Paris. The markets for art and
architecture have boomed in the past fifty years. Until the 1950s, cultural products were lux-
ury items for elites. Now they are sought by a far wider public.

CRITICAL CREATIVE DENSITY

A rough idea of the economic importance of the cultural sector in the wider sense (that is, the
sum total of advertising, film, literature, music, the press, graphics, architecture, and art) is
provided by Philipp Klaus, a geographer, in his study City, Culture and Innovation. He esti-
mates that in Zurich alone in 2001, 8.4% of the city’s working population was engaged in these
activities.
By both national and international standards this is a high number, and one
that suggests that Zurich—along with a few other centers such as Basel and Geneva—has
achieved a critical density of creative networks that in the world of cultural production and
trade adds up to global significance. The businesses of design and art trading have a crucial
characteristic in common, which is that they have a self-sustaining dynamic: quality attracts
quality, and ideas generate ideas. This virtuous circle is working well in Switzerland, and it is
difficult to think of a reason that it will not continue to do so.

References
Allenspach, Christoph. Architektur in der Schweiz —Bauen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.
Pro Helvetia Schweizer Kulturstiftung, Zurich, 1998.
Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: A Critical Building History. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983.
Zumthor, Peter. Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1998.

Adapted from: Breiding, R. James. SWISS MADE—The Untold Story Behind Switzerland’s Success.
London: Profile Books, 2013.

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HERZOG & DE MEURON

The greatest inspiration is the existing world in all

its ugliness and normality.
Jacques Herzog

53
HERZOG & DE MEURON Clearly, the heart of the scheme is the large egg-
NATURAL SWIMMING POOLS shaped bathing pool, which offers an opportunity
RIEHEN for non-swimmers and swimmers alike to cool them-
2010–2014 selves in the clear green waters. Low curved stairs
descend deeper and deeper into the depths, like
Sometimes projects take decades to be realized. ripples following the curve of the pool perimeter. Wide
The need to replace the obsolete public pools in timber jetties slide across the water surface tying
Riehen dates back to 1979 when the local community the pool back into the land and allowing swimmers to
initiated an architectural competition won by Basel- dive directly into the deep area of the pool. It is an
based Herzog & de Meuron. During the intervening elegant and sensitively conceived project, which will
decades the concept for the pools was radically surely be a hub for local swimmers to enjoy the
altered and a conventional swimming facility with its summer reprieve from the long winter months. Hope-
mechanical systems and chemical water treatments fully this project will inspire planners of future
was abandoned in favor of a biological filtration public pools to consider green, chemical-free options
system. Thus, the chlorinated pool morphed into an to promote healthy, ecological, chlorine-free
oval body of sweet water fringed by plant-filtering swimming.
cascades, where water is purified in the same way
that it is filtered in nature, through layer upon layer
of gravel, sand, and soil.
The Swiss are passionate about their public
bathing pools and there are myriads of idyllic pools
on the banks of rivers and lakes throughout the
country. For their Riehen pools, Herzog & de Meuron
took their cue from the traditional timber Badis
strung along the riverbanks of the Rhine. Nestled in
a hollow beneath undulating rows of grapevines,
the new pools are enclosed by a continuous larch
wood screen surrounding three borders of the wedge-
shaped site. In places the screen wall bulges gently
outward to accommodate changing rooms, while
smooth gray planes of concrete hold the showerheads
and screen the changing cabins from view. To the
northeast, the timber screen wall curves to enclose
an entrance area where changing rooms, toilets,
and a cafeteria are housed. The slender timber rafters
that support the roof create an even, rhythmic
pattern delicately tracing the perimeter edge that is
framed by a high belt of green trees. In effect,
the surrounding timber wall creates a sanctuary and
a two hundred-meter-long solarium for sun lovers.
A deep covered veranda is an intermediary space
leading off the cafeteria where parents are able to
keep an eye on their children in the shallow paddling
pool.

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HERZOG & DE MEURON
RICOLA HERB CENTER
LAUFEN
2014
Herzog & de Meuron’s Ricola Herb Center echoes the
long lines of hedges and the low-lying forms of
the Jura Mountains in the distance. The extenuated
length reflects the linear procession of drying, cutting,
blending, and storing the herbs used to create
Ricola herbal pastilles. World-renowned architects,
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are known
for their experimental and radical use of materials.
Their attitude to architecture is exploratory and often
playful, revealing their curiosity of the world. The
sheer range of their oeuvre, both geographically and
typologically, is indicative of this open-minded
approach. Materials and detailing are used in different
and innovative ways. Both architects have a deep
fascination for the work of fine artists and often find
inspiration for their designs by collaborating with
them. For a previous commission by Ricola, the archi-
tects used an image of a 1920s Karl Blossfeldt
photograph printed onto translucent polycarbonate
panels for the facades. For this, their most recent
and their seventh commission for Ricola, the
architects chose to use millennia-old, rammed-earth
construction techniques. By quarrying loam, marl,
and coarse aggregate from local mines, 670, 4.6-
tonne massive blocks were formed and assembled to
create the 111-meter-long, 30-meter-wide, and 11-
meter-high monolithic walls. Layer upon layer of
compacted earth create organically textured surfaces
that resonate the archaic power of elemental earth.
The joints between the huge earth blocks were
carefully filled with earth mortar by hand, creating
softly undulating lines of loam that hold the memory
of their making like a handmade pottery urn. The
monumental walls radiate the fine craftsmanship and
the sensibility of the men and women who lovingly
constructed them by hand. The rich, ochre color and
clean lines of the facades create a subtle, “soft”
piece of geometric architecture that sits discreetly in
its rural/semi-industrial landscape and complements
the building’s purpose of processing fresh alpine
herbs.
60
Sustainability and conservation of energy were
integral to Herzog & de Meuron’s concept from the
onset of the design process. Forty-five-centimeter-
thick earth walls regulate the humidity and tem-
perature of the internal spaces, providing a constant
internal climate. Coupled with the use of photo-
voltaic cells on the roof and the reuse of waste heat
from the production center nearby, energy consump-
tion was reduced by an impressive 90%. Further-
more, 99% of the materials for the earth walls were
quarried within a circumference of ten kilometers
from the site, while the rammed earth blocks were
made a mere three kilometers from the site. A skele-
ton matrix of concrete columns supports the roof
and mitigates against the force of wind pressure on
the expansive wall planes.
As a counterpoint to the rectilinearity of
the volume, each facade has a single, circular window
attached to the wall plane, like a great ornamental
brooch on the body of the building. These large, round
openings together with ribbons of skylights above
illuminate the four main production spaces with
natural light. From the vantage point of the visitors’
center on the upper level, one can view the lofty
spaces below. The great halls are permeated with the
tangy aroma of peppermint, elderflower, sage, and
thyme.
Herzog & de Meuron’s architectural repertoire
includes spectacular buildings like London’s Tate
Modern and Beijing’s Olympic Stadium; as with their
Riehen Pools, their most recent building for Ricola
is an example of their more restrained, less gran-
diose architecture. This project—the largest loam
building in Europe—is exemplary for its economy of
means, ecological shrewdness, and its subtle
reinterpretation of age-old construction methods.
The simplicity of form and the tactility of the rammed-
earth surfaces create a rich, sensuous piece of
twenty-first century architecture. It is tangible proof
that an industrial building can also be a beautiful
building.
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DIENER & DIENER

Designing is about having a reaction to a place, as well as a

trust in the beauty and depth of reality.
Roger Diener

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DIENER & DIENER
FORUM 3
BASEL
2005
As has been the case since time immemorial, archi-
tecture is used to signify wealth, success, and
power. With their ambitious concept to create a state-
of-the-art research and development site, one of
the leading enterprises of the healthcare industry has
slowly but surely been developing its “Campus of
Knowledge and Innovation” in Basel, building by buil-
ding over the past decades. World-class architects
such as David Chipperfield, Tadao Andō, Sanaa, Alvaro
Siza, and Rem Koolhaas have all had their turn at
piecing together Vittorio Lampugnani’s master plan
like a giant three-dimensional puzzle. Inspired
by the urban layout of ancient Greek cities, a dense
matrix of five-story building blocks define pedestrian
streets that open onto tree-filled piazzas. One of
the first architectural practices to be commissioned
to design a building on the extensive site was the
Basel-based office Diener & Diener. Their Forum 3
building is a shimmering apparition of glass and color
that mutates with the changing light and weather
conditions, from opaque when overcast, to iridescent
when sunny. No wonder it has been likened to a
Klee watercolor with overlapping planes of subtle,
translucent hues. The facades are a montage of 1,200
glass panels mounted on vertical steel rods in
twenty-one shades of color that cover a vast area of
4,300 m². It is like a gigantic art installation.
72
Many Swiss architects seem to have a deep
admiration for artists and choose to collaborate with
them in order to bring their unique artistic flair to
the creation of architecture. Herzog & de Meuron has
a particular penchant for joining forces with fine
artists and worked closely with Ai Weiwei on the
Olympic Stadium in Beijing. Here, Roger Diener invited
Swiss artist, Helmut Federle and Austrian architect
Gerold Wiederin to design the highly complex glass
facade. Their design is an ephemeral veil of glass that
dematerializes the architectural form. The elegant
cantilever facing the piazza that stretches the
full eighty-five meters across the building, further
enhances the illusion of the building hovering weight-
less above the site.
The interiors of Forum 3 are no less impressive
than its artistic outer guise: the floor of the four-
meter high entrance lobby is finished in black marble
from Greece and is adorned with large-format
abstract paintings and elegant timber furniture.
From within, color-filtered daubs of light spill across
the interior surfaces, enlivening the office spaces.
Initially, hidden within this glazed lightbox was
a tangled jungle of massive trees that soared twelve
meters—an idea conceived by the renowned land-
scape architects, Vogt. They referred to their Raum
für Pflanzen—or, space for plants—as a “compressed
landscape experience,” which was designed to
infiltrate the building with the sheer scale, complexity,
and rawness of nature.
Roger Diener has created a masterful building
that touches the senses and sustains a long-lasting
fascination. It might only be an office building, but
the marriage of architecture and fine art has elevated
the design to an almost sublime level.
 Here we could develop the design all the way into the
construction phase. If there is an identity of Swiss
architecture, then it can be found there.
Roger Diener

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NICKISCH WALDER

For us, designing is to transform a vision into a singular

entity which responds to all elements of architecture.
A pure, specific architecture to specific circumstances.
Nickisch Walder

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NICKISCH WALDER The delicate structures were dwarfed by the mas-
BASE CAMP MATTERHORN sive rock face soaring above, creating an apt counter-
2014 point between the transient nature of the base
camp, which was only there for a single season, and
Until the late nineteenth century the Alps were seen the massive mountain, which remains for millennia.
as an obstacle to transport and were feared by Although this was only a temporary solution to
anyone trying to cross them. Consequently, July 15, accommodate alpine climbers, great care and atten-
2015 was an auspicious date being the 150th anniver- tion was given to creating a design that did jus-
sary of the first ascent of the Matterhorn by the tice to the dramatic majesty of the location. The archi-
British climber, Edward Whymper. This is now regarded tects were respectful of the sensitivity of the site
as the birth of alpine tourism, which remains vital and made sure that no trace was left of the camp once
to Switzerland’s economy. To mark the anniversary of it had been dismantled.
Whymper’s climb, the Hörnli hut, a way-station en-
route to the Matterhorn peak, was renovated.
In order to cater for mountaineers during the interim
period of renovation, a temporary “pop up hotel”
sponsored by Swatch was erected on the slopes of
the Matterhorn. It is impossible to ascend the peak
from the valley in one session; mountaineers stay
overnight half-way up to acclimatize and to start their
hike up to the summit at daybreak.
Twenty-five, tent-like structures, scattered
along the alpine terrace were erected beneath the
iconic peak of the Matterhorn above Zermatt ski
resort. For the triangular huts, architect Selina Walder
took her inspiration from the pyramidal shape of
the Matterhorn that towers above the site. To reflect
the transitory nature of the project, the pitched
structures perch lightly on the mountain slope, like
folded origami. Built from aluminum and wood,
they are slightly elevated on slender, adjustable legs
that allow the timber floor of the two-person huts
to be horizontal and raised off the cold rocky surface,
enabling climbers to sleep more comfortably. The
construction is crisp and exact. Triangular doors flip
open like the flap of a tent with the door handle
and key slot placed diagonally. Larger huts accom-
modated dining and kitchen spaces where hikers
were served dinner and breakfast. As water is a scarce
resource on the site, no showering facilities were
offered, though there was a toilet.

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NICKISCH WALDER
REFUGI LIEPTGAS
FLIMS
2013

The dramatic backdrop to this holiday retreat in

Graubünden is the Flimserstein cliff face that was
left exposed after the largest alpine geological
collapse, 10,000 years ago. The Flims valley is still
littered with boulders the size of houses, debris
from the mountain that fractured so long ago. Selina
Walder and Georg Nickisch’s little forest hut is
fascinating particularly due to the manner of its con-
ception. What captures the imagination is how
the architects have used timber from the original hut
as formwork for the new building. The inner side of
the old timber wall becomes the outer side of the
new concrete wall, giving the concrete its scalloped
edge and leaving an embossed imprint on the surface,
like an inscribed memory.
The chalet is situated in a cool, shaded glen in
an otherwise sun-soaked plateau. It is a microclimate
too damp for a timber building, but perfect for
storing cheese. From a large rock in front of the entry
door, there is a step up to the threshold and down
again into the quiet interior of the hut. There are only
two rooms, one on ground level and the other, cave-
like, cut into the mountain where the old cheese
store used to be. A circular oculus cut into the roof
affords views of the crown of the trees above and
allows light into the open plan kitchen/dining/living
space on ground level. Sliced through the facade,
a generous deep window is set low in the wall, visually
bringing the surrounding landscape into the snug
interior. The deep concrete windowsill forms a bench
that extends beyond the window along the wall
towards the fireplace, the focal point of the space.
A narrow stairway curves down, away from the
light and into the subterranean, cave-like bedroom.
Inside the bedroom is a deep bath cast in concrete.
Bathed in soft indirect light, the bath is wedged
against massive slanted rocks giving the impression
of bathing inside a secluded mountain grotto.
There is a strong juxtaposition of materials: rock,
concrete, glass, and water.
With their starkly modern transformation, the
architects have managed to avoid creating nostalgic
chalet architecture. The building has the direct-
ness and the pragmatic nature of a traditional alpine
chalet, but is unapologetically contemporary at
the same time. One has to admire the lack of excess
or pretension in this small, but powerful building.

In the moment of casting, old and new are

inseparable entities.
Selina Walder

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SWISS ARCHITECTURE
FROM ELSEWHERE
Niall McLaughlin

96
From time to time a ripple from a smaller outpost interrupts our smooth, globalized market in
architectural images. We become aware of an emerging architectural identity, which owes its
nature to the specific characteristics of that region or culture. It rarely lasts long, as the iden-
tity derived from physical, economic, or social terroir quickly becomes codified into motifs
and identifiable forms that are absorbed again into the mainstream. For example, the exqui-
site geometric nuances and inflections incubated around the Douro become ubiquitous in the
suburbs of Dublin, Hackney, and Melbourne.
Swiss architecture has managed to maintain a longer and broader identity than
most of these regional manifestations. I am writing about it as an almost pure outsider. In
other words, I know very little about the ground conditions that have generated what we might
call a distinction in the work. I am looking at it as someone who regularly reads publications
and occasionally visits buildings, but I don’t know about individuals, factions, dynasties, or
schools within the local tradition.
When I asked my colleagues in a London practice about Swiss architecture,
it produced a remarkable consensus. It was seen to embody stolid, sober—almost time-
less—virtues. The general sense is that the work comes from a continuity of tradition and a
position of relative privilege. It is characterized by small to medium scale buildings carefully
detailed from well-crafted, traditional materials, usually in cartoonishly beautiful landscapes.
At its best it is refined, honest, and earthy. However, it is also seen as rigid, conservative, and
sometimes sanctimonious. Someone suggested it was “joyful” but they were quickly correct-
ed: “Yes, but it is a convent-school joy.” The prevailing opinion is that it is at the sensible end
of architectural production and that it has a prevailing stoical, sachlich character.
Looking at Swiss buildings in drawings and photographs and hearing Swiss
architects speak about their work, there is an emphasis upon a self-evident quality. “Here it
is,” they say, “I hardly need to tell you why it is so, because it must already be clear to you.” This
insistence on the common-sense obviousness of the work is something that I would like to
probe. Is it really so straightforward? Does it articulate its obviousness just a little too much,
even to the verge of quiet hysteria? Claiming that the work is conceptually transparent, truth-
ful, and original appears to fulfill an important need. It seems necessary to the deep social
contract between the architect and the community in a society that is anxious about its re-
lation with modernity. This appears to make it necessary to establish a connection with a
primitive regional tradition of construction, but to sidestep any overt references to the mod-
ernist canon.
Perhaps up to a third of the projects in this book are based upon a strategy
where a primitive or notionally original building form is subjected to an unsettling trans-
formation. An old stone hut is lined entirely on the inside with in-situ concrete; a mansion
is washed in stark white, a timber log cabin is reconceived as a skeuomorph in concrete
pseudo-logs; a hut is offered up on a concrete podium with a cavernous car park beneath, a
mountain lodge has taut, gaping windows utterly devoid of visible framing. The skill and
care involved in detailing and constructing these projects distracts us from the underlying
estrangement of the conceptual strategy. The idea of the primitive, of origins, is both staged
and profoundly denied at the same time. These buildings seem to embody a paradox: the re-
quirement to dwell simply in the world and the impossibility of that way of being.

97
 In other projects, the primitive type is not overtly courted, but the problematic
idea of origins is played out through material estrangement. Herzog & de Meuron’s Cultural
Museum in Basel refuses to settle into a stable object, it embodies an endless conceptual
flipping between two possible versions of itself. The now-famous Central Signal Box in Basel
both insists upon its absolute material identity and at the same time presents itself as a mi-
rage or fugitive illusion. The most profound of these projects is, perhaps, the earliest Ricola
building at Laufen (not the Ricola building published here) in which the hidden internal space
is enclosed in a blind facade that speaks of nothing but the staging of its own material iden-
tity. It is silent and opaque. There is no naturalism in these projects. Any apparent reference
to material or tectonic stability is immediately undermined by a contrary estrangement.
For me, this collection of projects brings to mind a number of associations.
The first is Semper’s famous footnote in Style, which refers to Hamlet’s question “What was
Hecuba to him?” It suggests to me the impossibility of conceptual transparency and the vic-
tory of representation over notions of literal truth—“to mask the material of the mask.” The
next is Aldo Rossi’s drawing and writing and the melancholy that comes from the impasse at
the center of his work. The last is the tradition of Robert Smithson and, in particular, the
framing and deracination of materials, their simultaneous exposure and estrangement, like
butterflies pinned in a glass. All of these associations have a tragic quality, based upon the
need for, and impossibility of, a form of living rooted in origins. It is this that I think gives
Swiss architecture its seriousness and perhaps its endurance.
I recently attended a lecture by Peter Zumthor in London. I had just spent the
day at Worcester College in Oxford reading Nicholas Hawksmoor’s description of his library
building there. It was apparent that Hawksmoor rested his authority for the work on pains-
takingly enumerating the precedents he was employing in this building. In contrast, Zumthor
mentioned no other architect in his description of his work, to the extent that he would not
answer questions about precedents after the talk. His presentation of his own authority
seemed to derive from his silence, perhaps insisting upon the origin of his ideas in his own
experience. This emphasis upon primitive original experience appears at the heart of the iden-
tity of Swiss architecture today. It allows the work to offer itself up as a resistance to the glob-
al market in architectural images, to the endless leveling brought about by visual exchange
without lived experience. But the recourse to origins is also a difficult strategy with its own
problems. The ground of origin, in materials, in experience, in typology, is less stable than we
think. This uncertainty haunts Swiss practice. It is intensely inventive, but it leaves the work,
for better or worse, in a state of isolation.

98
GION A. CAMINADA

One of the great challenges for me lies in building houses

that have a lasting—ideally almost an “absolute”—validity.
Gion A. Caminada

99
GION A. CAMINADA Sturdy timber columns create a rhythmic pro-
FOREST HUT gression of space and articulate the interior. The
DOMAT/ EMS fragrance of roughly sawn stone pine adds a special
2014 scented quality to the experience of being present
in the space, linking the building to its context on
Nestled in a clearing in a forest in the far east of a subliminal level. The sense of being in the forest
Switzerland is the Tegia da vaut or forest cabin. is encapsulated in the interior. There is no doubt that
The building was a gift to the commune Domat /Ems this Waldhütte has become an integral part of
and accommodates a forest classroom for school the secluded forest landscape where it now belongs.
children or for adults studying forestry, while private
individuals can also rent the space for functions.
Gion A. Caminada, the renowned Swiss architect who
designed the cabin, believes in the importance of
building projects in close proximity to his community
with materials and skills drawn from the locality.
Caminada champions traditional techniques and
local craftsmanship and the great care and effort that
are taken to realize his buildings is reflected in
the high quality of his architecture. Taking local ver-
nacular architecture as his point of departure,
Caminada grounds his buildings in their particular
topography and in the fine-grained specificity
of the local context. Although most of Caminada’s
projects are small-scale and are located in rural
villages in the Alps, like Vrin, Valendas, or Ems, his
work is nonetheless well-known throughout Switzer-
land and internationally.
This might not be a large building, but it never-
theless exudes a strong presence among the towering
dark green pines. It is a delicately layered building,
laid gently in its wooded site. The beautiful gesture of
the concave, wing-like roof and the facades that curve
outwards to meet the eaves, in combination with
the layered texture of the shingle facades, create the
primary elements of the cabin. The timber cladding
stops just short of the ground creating a delicate
shadow gap and an impression of levitation, as if the
building were suspended. Caminada’s choice of
materials is clear: a timber structure surrounded by
trees. Concrete steps projecting beyond the foot-
print of the cabin anchor the building and denote the
entry, while on the far side a raised outdoor timber
terrace creates a threshold to the forest that “bal-
ances nature and culture.”

Ambivalent spaces for the ordinary and the everyday, which

at the same time refer to something absent, are the high
art of architecture.
Gion A. Caminada

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GION A. CAMINADA
VIEWING TOWER
REUSS DELTA, LAKE LUCERNE
2012
Reuss Delta, in the heart of Switzerland, is nestled
between high, snow-capped Alps and the flat
green valley that opens out towards Lake Lucerne,
where river, shore, and lake slowly merge in mini
fjords and idyllic bathing islands. A few decades ago,
the future of the delta looked precarious as the
shoreline was gradually disappearing into the lake.
It was the 1985 Reuss Delta Law that secured the
site, which has subsequently become a haven for
shallow water wildlife and plants, as well as a leisure
attraction. The small archipelago was created with
3.3 million tons of rock excavated from the Gotthard
Base Tunnel. The massive flat rocks brought from
the tunnel excavation are ideal for sunbathing and
relaxing. The only human-made structure on the
delta is the eleven-meter-high viewing tower that
creates a vantage point from which to observe
the varied bird life and enjoy the surrounding natural
beauty of the mountains cascading into the lake
waters.
A clever design generally combines rationality and
emotionality; that is intellect and feeling.
Gion A. Caminada
104
Reuss Delta viewing tower typifies Caminada’s
sensibility to material and structure. Like Peter
Zumthor, Caminada hails from Graubünden and, like
Zumthor, is a trained carpenter and cabinet-maker.
The manner in which his buildings are crafted reflects
his intimate knowledge of materials and their
assembly. With its reduced material palette of locally
sourced timber and woven willow, like his forest
hut, the tower celebrates local skills and craftsman-
ship. Forty-eight silver-fir tree trunks—each
chosen and felled by local foresters and debarked by
hand—form a conical tower crowned by a light,
scallop-edged roof. A spiral staircase swirls its way
around the central trunk branching out from a
platform into four projecting viewing balconies facing
the four compass points. The higher one ascends,
the denser the weaving becomes, until one is almost
enclosed in fine interwoven twigs. Structurally,
both platform and stairs are hung from above by steel
rods suspended from the roof. The ceiling is com-
posed of pleated panels of woven reeds fanning out
from the central timber support, overlaid with
a whimsical tangle of twigs that soften the pattern
creating an unstructured, filigree layer. The woven
balustrades of the balconies are reminiscent of
the baskets of hot-air balloons. At this elevated view-
point observing the bird life, one feels like a bird
perched high in a nest.
Despite its strict symmetry, the structure retains
a sense of delicacy and sensuousness. During the
bare winter months, when the reeds are ochre-colored,
the golden tones of the timber tower are intricately
tied to its site and seem to emerge from the sweeping
surrounding landscape. Caminada has created
a clearly rational, though poetic construction where
each element is integral to the other, each indi-
vidual part only able to function with the support of
the other to create a harmonious, unified whole.
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JÜRG CONZETT

Structural engineering is one of the most interesting

occupations of human beings.
Jürg Conzett

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JÜRG CONZETT
TRAVERSINA FOOTBRIDGE 2
VIAMALA
2005
One could argue that in Switzerland the father of
architecture is engineering, as the discipline grew out
of the necessity to overcome the treacherous topog-
raphy. Over the centuries intricate networks of
bridges and tunnels have been built across the country
like a complex web allowing the safe passage of
people and goods from north to south and from east
to west, connecting even the most remote valleys
to urban centers. Engineering is simply omnipresent
in Switzerland. The creation of man-made struc-
tures in the daunting alpine landscape has no doubt
profoundly influenced the production and design
of architecture, both historically and currently. This
homage to Swiss architecture would not be complete
without showcasing one of the myriad engineering
feats accomplished by Swiss engineers.
As its Latin name implies, the Viamala route
in the legendary ravine near Davos in Graubünden was
originally regarded as being dangerous and malev-
olent. Previously, the idea was to pass through
the ravine as quickly as possible and to emerge safely.
Today there is still a residual mystery in the Viamala
Gorge and an allure to the raw beauty of its land-
scape. Over the years it has become a popular desti-
nation for tourists and hikers from far and wide.
As part of an open-air eco-museum in the valley and
to connect two fragments of an ancient Roman trail,
the gorge had to be traversed and the ravine bridged.
Jürg Conzett, the renowned Chur-based engineer,
who has worked for many prominent Swiss architects,
designed the initial Traversina footbridge, which
was unfortunately destroyed by an intense spring
storm in 1999. A new bridge was planned and Conzett,
together with his colleague Rolf Bachofner, was
commissioned once again to “bridge with gap.” It was
decided to move the new bridge to a less exposed
site further up the gorge. Many obstacles typical to
alpine structures had to be overcome to build the
bridge: a remote, inaccessible site, a tight budget,
and a short construction period. An added challenge
was how to overcome the obstacle of having to
span the width of gorge, while connecting the twenty-
five meter height difference from one side of the
gorge, forty meters across to the other. Conzett chose
to design a suspension bridge, or to be more precise:
114
a stairway suspended fifty meters above the valley
floor. The new bridge is fifty-seven meters long,
weighs around two hundred tons, and is made with
pre-tensile steel cables. The primary cable, lateral
diagonal rods, and larch wood walkway were con-
structed in situ in an extraordinarily dramatic and
hazardous manner suspended above the vertiginous
chasm. In a benevolent design gesture for those
who suffer from vertigo, direct views down into the
valley are averted by a layer of ten parallel glulam
girders beneath the stepped walkway. These also in-
crease rigidity so that when one ascends the 176
steps, the bridge barely wavers. Nevertheless, walk-
ing gingerly across the valley is not for the faint
hearted, as one feels rather like a circus trapeze artist
teetering across the ravine.
Conzett’s second Traversina footbridge is a re-
markable piece of engineering where design and
construction are taken to their limits. When mathe-
matics and art unite in harmony, like in a Bach
fugue, something of profound beauty is created. As in
Zumthor’s fine, leaf-shaped roof at St Benedict
Chapel, Conzett’s bridge is reminiscent of the beauti-
ful mathematical structures one sees in nature:
the delicate form of a leaf, the arc of a shell, or the
slow curve of a crescent dune. A design that has
clear associations with patterns in nature, especially
when set in natural surroundings, is anchored
deeply into its environment. Traversina footbridge is
such a feat of engineering design and construction.
Suspended gracefully in its sheer craggy setting,
both its delicacy and precision are truly admirable.
It is just one example of a myriad of superbly
designed bridges that connect valleys throughout
the country.
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PETER ZUMTHOR

In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture

can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms
and meanings, and speak its own language.
Peter Zumthor

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PETER ZUMTHOR
ST BENEDICT CHAPEL
SUMVITG
1985 –1988

Caplutta Sogn Benedetg, or St Benedict Chapel,

was built to replace the former Baroque chapel that
was crushed by an avalanche in 1984. A new site,
protected by the forest above, was chosen on an old
mountain trail above the hamlet, Sumvitg. The
chapel’s curved walls enclose a single volume, shaped
in plan like a leaf, an eye, or a boat. This form is
extruded upwards and crowned by a band of clere-
story lights that illuminate the chapel from above
revealing the sky. Sheathed in larch wood shingles,
the surface texture is reminiscent of the shim-
mering colors of Byzantine mosaics. There is a subtle
gradation of color as the shingles turn from silver
to golden as the facade curves away from the direct
rays of sun. Like a face that ages gracefully over
a lifetime, the chapel shows the weathering effects
of time on its textured skin.
Entering the chapel at an oblique angle to the
main body of the building, the space abruptly expands
vertically upwards. Tall, slender timber columns
rise through the space and converge with ribs of timber
beams on the ceiling. The timber structure is sepa-
rated from the cladding by a few centimeters, creating
a tension between the two and an interplay of
shadows. Like a spine with structural ribs, the roof
ridge gently curves over the space, enfolding it. In
effect the chapel is held by three curved planes sup-
ported by timber supports, like a skeleton that
gives form to the body of the building. These timber
columns enable one to read the flow of structural
forces bearing the weight of the roof.
The lack of any eye-level window openings allows
no view to distract, only the slow movement of a
bow of sunshine across the wall as the day progresses.
Standing inside the chapel feels like being on the
inside of a musical instrument; there is a vague expec-
tation of sound. St Benedict epitomizes Zumthor’s
quiet architecture; it is discreet, but powerful. The
alpine chapel communicates simple faith stripped of
luxury or opulence.

122
 It is only between the reality of things and the imagination
that the spark of the work of art is kindled.
Peter Zumthor

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PETER ZUMTHOR
THERMAL BATHS
VALS
1990 –1996
Rituals of bathing and cleansing have been part of
human civilization for millennia. In Istanbul and
Budapest, Rome and Bath the ritual of bathing has
been central to social culture since ancient times.
Peter Zumthor’s thermal baths in Vals rekindle the
“high architecture” of ancient baths and the splendid
buildings housing them that are a testament to
their historic importance. Using natural resources
at his disposal in the alpine valley: gneiss and
water, Zumthor has hewn an evocative sequence of
spaces from layer upon precise layer of solid rock.
The building is cut deep into the mountain, rock
embedded onto rock, built up in slender horizontal
strata of Valser quartz. Deeply rooted into the
mountain slope, the building literally emerges from
its own geology.
Pools of clear alpine water from deep beneath
the earth are held between massive stone walls.
Nothing is revealed immediately, rather it is as
you wander through the myriad of concealed spaces
that you discover the building. “The meander,”
as Zumthor calls it, “is a designed negative space
between the blocks, a space that connects every-
thing as it flows throughout the entire building.”
He compares exploring the complex layout of spaces
and pools to ambling through a woodland of trees,
“Like walking in a forest without a path. A feeling of
freedom, the pleasure of discovery.”
Zumthor’s architecture celebrates the sensuous
experience of bathing. The exhilarating shock
of plunging into cold 14 °C water directly after dipping
into almost unbearably hot 42 °C makes one’s body
glow, while floating outdoors in 36 °C water when
it’s snowing is an invigorating experience. To enter the
sound bath you have to swim through a narrow
passageway into a vertical, water-filled space where
the ceiling soars six meters above. Lit from beneath,
the grotto is an acoustic chamber where bathers tread
water while humming, listening to the overlay of
reverberating voices. In the small, enclosed, intimate
pools Zumthor has managed to recreate the impres-
sion of being in a secret coastal cave distant from the
mundane routine of everyday life, while conversely
the main pools open to the landscape and are soaked
in daylight. The palette of materials—clear water,
polished stone, brass, chrome, leather, and velvet—
are combined with a remarkable sophistication,
choreographed to enhance the essential, evocative
qualities of each material. The touch, smell, and
sound of these materials make bathing there both a
highly sensory and highly aesthetic experience.
The theatricality of steaming water held in stone
is heightened by the intense modeling of light and
shadow. There are spaces shrouded in misty shadows
and somber corners contrasted with light-flooded
sunny areas where you can recline and enjoy the
enormous, framed alpine views. Natural light filters
from above through long fissures between the roof
slabs, brushing along dark stone walls, while chinks
of blue light filter down onto blue water. Being in
Vals makes you acutely aware that to create archi-
tecture is to define the dimensions and enclosure of
space. Through his relentless exploitation of the
inherent qualities of his chosen materials, the mod-
eling of space and the modulation of light, Zumthor
has managed to elevate the simple act of bathing
to an almost mystical experience.

Mountain, stone, water—building in the stone, building

with the stone, into the mountain, building out of
the mountain, being inside the mountain—how can the
implications and the sensuality of the association of
these words be interpreted architecturally?
Peter Zumthor

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134
TALKING TO PETER ZUMTHOR
ARCHITECT AS AUTHOR

Peter Zumthor starts his book Thinking Architecture by stating that when he thinks about ar-
chitecture, images arise within him and by drawing on intuition, memories, and free associa-
tions combined with systematic and rational thinking he develops a design. It is perhaps this
seamless interplay of intuitive feeling and rational understanding that enables him to raise
ordinary buildings to the extraordinary. In his book, Zumthor expresses his motivation to de-
sign buildings that arouse emotions and understanding and that have a particular presence
and sense of belonging. “To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with
attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and integrity, and with
warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not repre-
senting anything, just being.”
In Thinking Architecture Zumthor explores our relationship to nature and the
profound emotions it can evoke within us, “The beauty of nature moves something great in us.”
Though we might not understand it, we sense our part in nature; we come from it and return
to it. One senses this awe and admiration for nature in his work. “When I concentrate on a spe-
cific site or place for which I am going to design a building, when I try to plumb its depths, its
form, its history, and its sensuous qualities, images of other places start to invade this pro-
cess of precise observation: images of places I know and that once impressed me, images of
ordinary or special places that I carry with me as inner visions of specific moods and qualities;
images of architectural situations, which emanate from the world of art, or films, theater or
literature.” This sensitivity of how architecture relates to its particular context and landscape
is part of what gives his work great strength.
As an architect Zumthor is interested in how one experiences a building; the fall
of light on a surface, the shape of a door handle, the sound of a voice in a high room, the
atmosphere of a space. Whether chapel, museum, or house, his buildings allow the essential
ingredients of architecture to resonate. Like a beautiful piece of music or a painted master-
piece, his buildings capture moods and stir emotions. With his ingenious use of materials,
Zumthor has been called a shaman and a mystic of his craft. He writes that it is not the mate-
rials themselves that are poetic, but the manner of their combination and their form that
elevates them. “The sense that I try to instill into materials is beyond all rules of composition,
and their tangibility, smell, and acoustic qualities are merely elements of the language we are
obliged to use. Sense emerges when I succeed in bringing out the specific meanings of certain
materials in my buildings, meanings that can only be perceived in just this way in this one
building.” Zumthor’s work is restrained but powerful, both precise and sensuous. His archi-
tecture manages to reach the “hard core of beauty” he writes so poetically about.

135
 Anna Roos (AR): This publication is about the sensibility of Swiss architects
and the culture of architecture in Switzerland. I see this as a country that up-
holds and values the tradition of architecture, one could argue, to a greater
degree than elsewhere. This is not about promoting a brand, not a white cross
on a red background, but about a broad approach to a discipline. I’d like
to explore what’s happening here. In this interview I would like to discuss how
you perceive the unique place that Switzerland holds in the sphere of archi-
tecture internationally and explore your role in this context. How this rich
architectural tradition has evolved historically.
In some countries architects do not have a good reputation and laypeople like
to criticize architects. I get the impression that their role is taken less seri-
ously than here in Switzerland. Do you also get the impression that architects
are generally held in higher esteem in Switzerland than elsewhere?
Peter Zumthor (PZ): The profession of an architect is held in high esteem as a title in Italy, where
every architect is called a “doctor.” Switzerland has a different approach. Long ago archi-
tects used to have a good reputation here. As a child I remember my father talking respect-
fully about architects. He differentiated between architects who were draftsmen or
“architect” architects; those who really studied architecture. He made a distinction and had
a greater respect for trained architects. So he’d often say, “That is not an architect,” because
in Switzerland anyone can call themselves an architect. Then during the 1960s and
1970s there was a building boom and architecture and architects in Switzerland lost their
good reputation. It was sort of like “building as destroying.” There was a famous publi-
cation by an architect at that time, Rolf Keller Bauen als Umweltzerstörung (Building as
Environmental Destruction). Then in the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s we had
to consciously rebuild the reputation of the architect. I was involved with this here in
Graubünden. We looked into “responsibility” through organizations like the Schweizerische
Werkbund (Swiss Guild), and the Schweizer Heimatschutz (Swiss Heritage Association).
We showed ourselves as being responsible for our environment and also being respectful of
the past. And so we had to rebuild the reputation of the architect.

AR: And that was evidently successful?

PZ: Yes, it took some fifteen to twenty years. I initiated a prize for good building and other
initiatives like that. It took some time. I think architects are respected quite well now.

AR: Do you think more than elsewhere?

PZ: This is hard for me to say.

AR: There is bold use of materials in many buildings in Switzerland, particularly

of concrete, stone, and wood, historically due to the lack of natural resources
like iron. This tradition has continued to the present day. What role do you think
this palette of materials and the sensitivity to materials has played in the
making of architecture in this country?
PZ: I can only answer this question on a personal basis, not in a generalized way. Since I am
not so interested in the topic of architecture or the idea of Swiss architecture. I start
with a place, I look around. I see mountains, I see a desert. I think of the atmosphere of my
not-yet existing building, I imagine how people will use it, experience it. What can I do?
What is the specific energy of materials I should use so that they will love it. So as you can
see I am extremely interested in generating the right mood with the materials I pick and
maybe the only Swiss thing I can see in this process is me, myself being Swiss.

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 AR: It seems to me as if the relationship that many Swiss architects have to
their landscape and their sensitivity to the varied historic traditions of
architecture informs their work even today. Pretty much wherever one is in
Switzerland, the landscape is present: a river, forest, mountain, or lake.
We know that Swiss architects are very much guided by the constraints and
challenges of the landscape. How does this interaction take place in your
work?
PZ: This is a basic in my work. I want to make things that are good for the place and good for
its use. I like to study the place, whether it is at a low or a high altitude, whether it’s in
Switzerland or somewhere else.

AR: How do you go about studying the place, do you photograph and sketch,
go there many times at different times of the day and different seasons.
How do you record your building sites?
PZ: It differs; I have to get a feeling for the place.

AR: Do you return to the site many times before you start your design process
and put pen to paper?
PZ: Sometimes I have a feeling right away, then I don’t have to go back.

AR: Like when you meet a person for the first time?
PZ: Yes. Usually I don’t find it so difficult to get a feeling in L. A. or Norway, or wherever.
To see, and to react to what’s there. Sometimes I need to know more.

AR: Do you record it here primarily in your head?

PZ: Yes, it’s not so much about a scientific analysis. This could be interesting, but basically
it’s reacting to what’s there. You open up your heart and your eyes and then you can see.

AR: I have read in an interview you saying that landscape and garden grow ever
more into the interior of your designs. Has the natural surrounding become
more important to you during the course of your career or has it always been
so?
PZ: It has always been important to me, but its consciously becoming more and more
important. You can see this in all my works—in large-scale projects and in small-scale archi-
tecture and landscape. Yes, this is so in all of my projects, there is a kind of a garden or
landscape as an integral part of the architecture.

AR: I like the idea of the garden encroaching into the interior. How would you
do this in an urban context, in Los Angeles (LACMA) for instance?
PZ: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is located in Hancock Park or what’s left of it,
because in the second half of the twentieth century several buildings where placed in the
park, taking away large pieces of it. One of the key elements of my new design is to re-
establish the horizontal flow of the park by elevating the museum. Glass pavilions respond-
ing to the park and the Wilshire Boulevard generate a largely permeable ground floor
below the hovering main mass of the museum. But there is more to the landscape of the
place. It is an ancient landscape. Tar has surfaced and has formed pits of tar, which became
traps for animals 40,000 years ago. The oil rose to the surface of these pits. The animals
of the time got trapped, so now when you dig you will find layers and layers of fossils from
the tar in the lakes. Fossils of mammoths and saber-tooth tigers. There is a Walt Disney
kind of character in the way the tar pits address the public at the moment. I hope that with
the shape, placement, and the dark material of my building I can provoke a deeper feeling
for this specific place.

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 AR: You have been working on LACMA in Los Angeles, and the House on a Hill in
Devon and, I remember last time I was here you were working on an enormous
wax model of a museum on a river somewhere in Russia. I also saw huge
models of an ensemble of buildings for a zinc mine museum in the mountains
of Norway. Some of your most well-known buildings are in neighboring
Germany. There does not seem to be anything fundamentally different about
your international work. As a Swiss person, do you feel that you have the
same freedom to do your work abroad as you do here?
PZ: The conditions always change from country to country. I always have to study them:
Who is the client? What’s the place? What kind of society is there? How does the building
code work? Are there good craftspeople and where are they? How is the building process
organized? And so on. This is always different; I study this, whether in L. A., in Norway, or
in South Korea. It takes a lot of time, but it’s very important to study the specific conditions.
In South Korea, where I have started a project—a teahouse—I have a lot of trust and
confidence around me. It’s the same thing in L. A. and now I also know where the good crafts-
men are and how I would like to organize the whole project. But basically this is similar
in Switzerland. This probably has more to do with my standing. But the conditions are always
different, for instance, in England they have little experience in working with concrete
so they cannot do certain things. Sometimes regulations don’t make sense but you have to
cope with them, like in Germany where there are a lot of regulations; and Austria has
even more regulations than Switzerland. Each country has its own complexities that one
needs to understand.

AR: Your work seems so strongly rooted to this landscape. How do you approach
a project and how do you react to a landscape where you don’t have a historic
relationship or personal memories?
PZ: You could put it this way: we all come from somewhere. We all come from a home.
You come from a home and I come from a home, that’s where we all start. But then we go to
other places and have new experiences. I’m rooted here and it’s good that I’m rooted
here, because it makes me able to see the differences between places and to react to them.
So this juxtaposition goes well together, the “personal” and the “foreign.”

AR: In your selection of images in the book The Images of Architects you chose
images of two Islamic buildings, Hagia Sophia and the Red Fort in Delhi as
images that inspire you. In what way are you able to draw inspiration for your
work from different cultures in distant places? For example when you
travel to similar sites; do you sketch them and study them?
PZ: Wherever I go I’m interested in everything I see—on an intellectual level, or as a pure
experience of landscape, or of different cultures. It is always interesting to understand,
but first of all it is important to simply look and see. First I ask myself, “How does this work?
What is this?” I’m continuously influenced by everything I see and experience. Like every-
body else, you live and you see things and then, when you face a problem there is a huge
storage of images in your mind. Most of the time you don’t even know where they come from
but they are there.

AR: Yes, I think as an architect wherever one travels one is aware one’s looking
and observing.
PZ: Probably also as a writer one does this, a lot of people look very carefully, artists too.

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 AR: Today there is often a strong focus on image; this has also affected
architecture. Buildings have become brand objects and some architects have
their signature style. In contrast to this many architects here are driven
by a historic tradition of local materials and craftsmanship; a kind of “slow
architecture.” In an interview you once said that you don’t want to be seen
as a brand architect. Refusing to be trapped into a brand I’m sure allows you
a kind of freedom. When presented with a big international commission like
LACMA, how have you managed to remain free from this “branding”?
PZ: I always work like that whether it’s a large-scale project like LACMA or a small project in
a neighboring village. I probably work more like an artist. I have a project and then I look
and I start to come up with something which I think makes sense, so if the image gets
in my way I have to fight it. Or, in the worst case, I say, “I cannot work for you.” Because if it’s
only about the name and the image, then I can’t continue. So I have to find out early on
whether my clients are sincere.

AR: Has that happened before that you’ve had to withdraw?

PZ: Yes, it has happened a couple of times. I’ve had to think, “Okay, if it’s more about the image
then I won’t do it,” because I always want to create the whole building. I can see that big
architectural firms do a lot of more-or-less commercial work. In some offices nobody makes
a drawing any more. I think that’s another way of working, maybe it’s also another way
of making money, but I’m not like that. I am interested in the kind of work which keeps me
going. I work more like an author.

AR: To me it is telling that rather than being lured by the bright lights of the big
city, you have chosen to remain in Haldenstein. Clearly you are not seduced
by the celebrity circuit, but are more interested in continuing your pursuit of
architecture here in this small village. Does this tie into a pursuit to remain
somehow free?
PZ: I’m here in this place because I found my wife here and we wanted to stay here. We have
people working here from twelve different nations at the moment. In this mundane place
I can ask, “How is it in Lebanon? How is it in England? How is it in Poland?” So spiritually we
are actually part of the world but we happen to work here, it’s accidental. I think this
turned out to be a really beautiful place to live and work. Maybe this is the best thing that
could have happened to me. If you’d have asked me thirty years ago, “Would you like to create
a big office and work around the whole world; become a Pritzker Prize winner and work
in Haldenstein,” then I would have said, maybe that’s a contradiction. But I never had these
ideas, it just happened to me. In my life the best things happen without premeditation.
I’m glad I didn’t get many of the things I wanted. I found that out later in life.

AR: Your path to becoming an architect has not been a classical one. During
the 1960s and 1970s, you went from carpentry to furniture design, industrial
design to interior design, and then eventually progressed to architecture.
Do you think this unconventional path might have also liberated you in a way
allowing you to create your own authentic position?
PZ: Looking back I think its suits me well. Let’s say I learned how to make things in my father’s
workshop for four years. Then I learned about history and art history, and the history of
buildings from working for the Department for the Preservation of Monuments in Graubünden.
Before this, I had an extremely good year doing a course at the Kunstgewerbeschule
(Arts and Craft School) in Basel. I didn’t realize at the time how important this would be later
on. The teachers there taught us the crafts of how to draw, how to paint, and how to water-
color. You need these skills as an architect I would say. The Vorkurs, as the name says, came
from the Bauhaus. They still teach these skills today, but now it’s more intellectual maybe.
At that time it was completely focused on learning skills. These skills are scarce today.
I use them everyday, and I can see how my young architects often make drawings that are
not in proportion; they sometimes lack these skills… But that was a wonderful year, making
and learning these artistic skills. The rest is personal looking and feeling.

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 AR: Yes, certainly one feels this in your work, the fact that you’ve had an inti-
mate knowledge of how things are put together. Because, especially in
Anglo-Saxon countries, architecture is approached as an academic subject,
and architects often don’t know how to put materials together.
PZ: Yes, only the surface is treated and someone else puts it together. No, here in Haldenstein
I teach my people to come from the inside out, not only in the buildings, but also in
the real materialization and construction, from the inside out. We know how to construct.

AR: You might work in this small village in Graubünden but you are certainly an
inspiration to architects all over the world. You are a testament to the fact
that it is possible to remain true to your concept. But some say, “Yes but that’s
Zumthor,” you belong in your own category. For “normal” architects this
level is nigh impossible to achieve. Do you also see this as a privileged position
or do you see it purely as a matter of principle?
PZ: I can only do the best, which comes to my mind faced with the work I do; my work. I can
only say to myself, “This is the best I can do, I am satisfied with this now. This is it.” So
you can call this “non-compromising,” but it’s actually a result of a process, it’s not a decision
not to make compromises. If you write a book, or if you compose a piano piece then this
matter of compromise in an artistic work is not so curious. I work mainly as an author. I’m an
architect as an author, so I work in a similar way as an artist would work, and an artist
has to follow his personal truth. I want to do something which works well and which fits to
the place; as if it were for myself. I have to be excited about it. The building has to fit to
the place; it has to fit to its use. I write a building like a piece of music, like you would write
a book, or write a poem and then this is just how it has to be. To create my architecture
I also have to work together with many people. And of course the client is very important.

AR: It’s difficult because there are so many people involved, authorship is
maybe more difficult when creating a piece of architecture.
PZ: The difference is, I’m a conductor and composer with a big orchestra on site. And then
there’s also the client who comes and says, “No, don’t play this.” So the client and I,
we have to understand each other: If the client is not interested in my ideas then I can’t work
with him, but if the client says, “I’m interested in the way that you work. Can you make a
composition for me? I wouldn’t know how to compose it, but see this is the task,” then I’m
okay. I always do the best I can, as if it were for myself.

AR: It seems as though you don’t overtly reference other buildings, or if at

all tangentially. You spent a decade working in the heritage department here
in Chur. Did you find that experience has had a specific influence on your
work?
PZ: It’s part of my “off-center” kind of architecture education, this is what I was mentioning
before. I studied let’s say around 5,000 old farmhouses trying to understand how they
were built and constructed, how old they were and how they came together as buildings.
We made drawings and inventories and so on. There were farmhouses as well as some “higher
architecture”—though all alpine architecture. I did this for eight to ten years. I learned
a lot technically and historically, and also about the development of architecture and about
vernacular architecture in this region. There were some traces of well-known artists who
came into the village to work as well, so you could see the vernacular and the stylish juxta-
posed—you could see a merging of the two. This was a great time for me.

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 AR: The chapter title “The Hard Core of Beauty” ¹ in your book Thinking Archi­
tecture is evocative. The concentrated substance of a building that imbues
beauty. I can imagine that you don’t set out overtly to create something
beautiful, but that it is something that happens when all the thousands of
decisions that you make combine in an entirety. “Does beauty have a form?”
I realize it’s a big topic, but can you elaborate on that?
PZ: Beauty is something very personal, the experience of beauty doesn’t happen so often.
It has to do with a chemical, emotional reaction in your body where all of a sudden you find
something to be beautiful. There’s this argument that beauty lies in the eye of the be-
holder, which is true for me. But not every object stirs this emotion of beauty, obviously it
needs something on the other side. Like, for example, if you fall in love with a woman, it
needs something else opposite to set up something beautiful. So that’s what I do: I create
these objects and hope that they might be a beautiful object for users and others. I’m
sure you also know that if you want to reach this ideal, it probably has to ring true in a way.
I think if you don’t want artificial beauty, there is a more essential beauty. I came to realize
that I probably do have the talent to create beautiful space, and form, and balance,
where everything starts to come together. I can see that for some people this is difficult,
because they look and say, “Oh how can you do this?” I guess there is a sensitivity and
talent I have. Of course I’m not the only one, many people have this. You also have to accept
that it’s a beautiful human capacity. There are even more beautiful talents than I have.
There are great people like Mozart and Bach, they had a talent which is unbelievable. This
is the greatness of human beings that every once in a while there are incredible talents
that you can hardly explain. I’m not putting myself on that level. I respect that some things
don’t come from me, they don’t come from work—they come from nature.

¹ From a poem by the American poet William Carlos Williams

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SAVIOZ FABRIZZI

Our approach to architecture seeks balance between

spatiality and the expression of materials in order to reveal
the intrinsic qualities of a site and built heritage.
Savioz Fabrizzi

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SAVIOZ FABRIZZI
MAISON BOISSET
LE BIOLLEY
2012
A significant proportion of architecture in Switzerland
consists of renovating old rural buildings and farm-
houses. Casa d’Estate by Buchner Bründler is an
example in Ticino, while Maison Boisset is an example
in the French-speaking canton, Valais. The project
brief for Sion-based architects, Savioz Fabrizzi was to
convert an old, triple-story barn into a contemporary
holiday house. The building is situated in Le Boilley,
a village high in the Alps near Martigny. Typical of
local vernacular architecture, the barn is comprised
of timber-board construction supported above
the ground by a stone base to protect the timber from
snow and to insulate the house from the icy winters.
The building is perched vertiginously above the valley,
the elevation affording panoramic vistas. From
the exterior, the sharp, glazed front door flush with
the stonework is the only hint of the sleek interior
transformation.
The house consists of three, sixteen-meter-square
spaces on three levels: the kitchen/dining area
is sandwiched between two bedrooms, one above for
adults and the other below for children. The entry
cuts through massive stone walls, allowing access
into the kitchen-dining space which is clad in honey-
colored larch panels. Within the compact space all
fittings are meticulously crafted, creating a cabin-like
atmosphere. In order to mitigate the small-scale
dimensions, Savioz Fabrizzi had to plan the rooms
with the utmost care in order to utilize every inch of
space. Thus, the windowsill doubles as a seating
bench that turns the corner around the dining table,
while the full height of the rooms is used for
cupboard space. The kitchen unit is tucked into a wall
niche and is perfectly aligned with the window
opening. The frame of the window is carefully con-
cealed behind the cladding, thereby emphasizing the
landscape and drawing nature into the building.
Thanks to the almost zen-like reduction of the interi-
ors, the eye is left undistracted, allowing one to
fully enjoy the breathtaking views stretched across
the valley below.
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Access to the main room on the upper level is via
a steep staircase, like a tree-house ladder. Monastic
in its simplicity, the only furniture is the double
bed and a cupboard, also crafted from larch wood.
The pitched roof is expressed in the interior of the
bedroom; the original crossbeam at the apex disrupts
the uniformity of the surfaces and is a reminder
that this structure dates back over a century. A strip
of light filters into the space through an elongated
opening that corresponds to the eye level of someone
seated in the bed, while a glazed door opens onto
the L-shaped balcony from where one can enjoy the
spectacular aerial views of the alpine landscape.
There is a bunkroom on the lower level with en-suite
bathroom, also fully clad in larch wood. A glass
door replaced the old cattle grate to allow light and
access from the children’s room to the exterior.
The crisp, clean timber finishes impart the interiors
with a flavor of traditional Japanese architecture.
The steep incline of the site affords the building
direct access to the outside on two levels: both the
kitchen level and the lower level.
Thanks to clever planning and fine detailing,
Savioz Fabrizzi has managed to create a spacious
feeling, even though the entire house is merely forty-
eight square meters. The rustic stone and raw
timber exterior is juxtaposed by the delicate, smooth
surfaces of the interior spaces. This powerful
contrast of old and new builds up tension. It is this
dichotomy that gives the project its strength.
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SAVIOZ FABRIZZI
MAISON RODUIT
CHAMOSON
2005
As with other projects showcased in this publication,
the landscape plays an integral role in the archi-
tecture. Maison Roduit cannot be disconnected from
the drama of the jagged mountains looming in the
background; indeed the house seems to emerge
directly from its geology and has an intense sense of
belonging to the site. Laurent Savioz was commis-
sioned by local artists to revitalize the old, rural
farmhouse in Chamoson that had been neglected and
had fallen into disrepair. The renovation is the latest
in a long history of construction on the building
dating back to 1814. Rather than simply gutting the
house, the architects salvaged and upgraded the
dilapidated structure. The exterior volume has been
retained and the stone facades preserved wherever
possible.
What is most striking is the rustic stonework
of the building and the lively interplay of textured sur-
faces. The architects sought to reinforce the strong
mineral character and emphasize the stonework
by replacing sections of the building previously made
of timber weatherboarding with solid concrete. Thus
the massive, rough stone walls are juxtaposed with
flat planes of exposed concrete subtly embossed with
the grain of the timber shuttering. The juxtaposition
of the two materials and the contrast of surfaces
imparts a powerful, corporeal quality to the archi-
tecture. By lining the interior with an insulating layer
of concrete mixed with foamed recycled glass
(Misapor), a threefold upgrade was made: a new load-
bearing structure was formed, the old stone walls
were reinforced, and thermal insulation was provided.
The massive, monolithic walls create a profound
sense of shelter and protection. The house is both
archaic, “ur-abode,” and a contemporary home at the
same time.
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The building is organized on three, staggered
levels on an L-shaped plan with the kitchen positioned
at its heart. Three interior floor levels are reflected
on the exterior by three pitched roofs that build up to
a climax at the intersection of the two wings where
the house reaches its highest level, while the pointed
gabled roofs echo the serrated peaks soaring
above. The highest level culminates in the main bed-
room with its own en-suite bathroom and walk-in
cupboard. A corner of the room is cut away to create
a gallery that looks down into the double-volume
kitchen area below, enabling the three-dimensionality
of the house to be perceived. Like a pinwheel, the
kitchen extends to the living room on the south, and
the atelier to the west. The robust use of materials
on the exterior is continued in the interiors,
which are formed from unrefined mineral materials:
natural stone, exposed concrete, and polished
screed floors. Thus the materialization of the building
both inside and out is sustained with the same
confidence and rigor.
The former window apertures have been retained,
while a few larger openings were added to allow
natural light and to open the interior spaces to
the breathtaking landscape. In order to minimize the
impact of the new openings on the volume of the
house and to utilize the substantial thickness of
the walls, the architects have kept the windows flush
with the exterior surface. In contrast, the existing
punctured windows are recessed into the wall
surface, creating deep shadow lines and revealing the
depth of the solid walls from the outside.
Switzerland has one of the most sophisticated
ecological building standards worldwide and
the Swiss take pride in their ecological architecture.
While Savioz Fabrizzi has been respectful to the
existing fabric of the two-hundred-year-old house,
the practice has also managed to upgrade it
to the latest ecological standards. Thanks to the high
level of thermal insulation, controlled ventilation,
and energy supply from renewable sources, Maison
Roduit complies with the Swiss “Minergie” energy
conservation standard. Twenty-three square
meters of solar panels on the roof generate around
thirty-five percent of the annual heating requirement
for heating and hot water supply.
The strong material quality of this building in
stone and concrete lends the architecture its force.
The intervention is a modern continuum of alter-
ations that the building has undergone over the
centuries. It is a robust building that will probably
endure well into the next century.
 The imposing proximity of the rocks and its stone
construction lend this building a unity with its
surroundings.
Savioz Fabrizzi

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ANDREAS FUHRIMANN
GABRIELLE HÄCHLER

Perhaps the myth of Swiss architecture is only a perception

from outside, like Switzerland itself.
Gabrielle Hächler

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ANDREAS FUHRIMANN GABRIELLE HÄCHLER
FINISHING TOWER
ROTSEE, LUCERNE
2012 – 2013

The interesting aspect about the finishing tower on

Lake Rotsee, near Lucerne, is that for most of the year
it is not in use. The building remains closed during
the winter months until July and opens for a few
weeks of feverish activity during the annual summer
rowing regatta, when it springs to life. While in
use, the large-format shutters are slid open and
popped up, exposing the interior spaces to the wide
stretch of lake and the oarsmen in their sleek
boats gliding past the finishing line that the tower
demarcates. The height of the tower affords a
vantage point from where the jury, press, and regatta
committee can marshal the time of the rowers and
observe proceedings from an elevated position.
Zurich-based architects, Andreas Fuhrimann
Gabrielle Hächler, think of their Zielturm or “finishing
tower” as a hybrid structure—both functional
and sculptural at the same time. As the surrounding
natural landscape changes its guise when the
seasons turn, so the tower stands closed and silent,
an abstract form, sentinel-like, its watery reflection
mirrored in the dark waters of the Red Lake.
During the rowing regatta season, it takes up its
“real” architectural function and opens up to the long
body of water. Supported on a concrete platform,
the prefabricated timber tower is composed of three
spaces stacked above one another, rather like
the wooden blocks from a child’s toy box. The manner
in which the levels slightly shift in plan and the
light-weight quality of the timber give the tower
a light-hearted feel. It is reminiscent of a waterside
bird-hide. Held above the water surface by concrete
pillars, the structure appears to hover above the
lake allowing the painterly landscape to envelop it.
A slender concrete pier allows access to the tower
across the water, anchoring the light timber struc-
ture onto the lakeshore. Together with the concrete
stairway that links the lower level to the upper
levels, the concrete jetty creates a solid spine that
holds the tower visually, giving it weight. When
closed the Zielturm is a quiet, enigmatic building that
evokes a feeling of contemplation and possibility;
but when opened up it is vibrant and playful.

There are universal aspects of architecture, general

principles that apply. Nevertheless a feel for atmospheres
is created regionally.
Gabrielle Hächler

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VALERIO OLGIATI

When you’re surrounded by the physical mass of these

mountains, decisions are more simple, more direct. In this
setting, we can operate in heavier dimensions.
Valerio Olgiati

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VALERIO OLGIATI The white exterior is drawn into the interior
THE YELLOW HOUSE exhibition spaces: walls and ceilings are white and
FLIMS the timber floors are whitewashed. What is most
1997 conspicuous about the interior is the asymmetry.
A heavy oak structural column is positioned off
Like snow covers a winter landscape in a unifying center, creating an imbalance and precariousness
blanket of white, so the entire volume of the Yellow to the spaces. The manner in which the column veers
House—regardless of the material beneath; off at an obtuse angle in the upper level to meet
concrete, stone, or wood—is washed in pure white. the roof apex exacerbates this sense of tilting
The brilliant surface visually distances the building and being off-kilter. Olgiati plays with our senses and
from its local environment and radically transforms makes us acutely aware of architecture as an art
an old farmhouse into a clean, modern piece of form. This relatively small-scale building in a little
architecture where exhibitions on alpine architecture town in the Alps of Graubünden is an internationally
are held. Valerio Olgiati’s clever renovation debunks significant piece of contemporary architecture.
any preconception of quaint alpine architecture.
The white cube is abstract; the bright white reflects
every ray of sunlight to create a pure vision far
removed from the mundane. From afar the museum
looks like a minimalist sculpture, but as you move
closer the patina of history is subtly revealed.
Olgiati is a highly intellectual architect who likes
to subvert norms and to challenge one’s perception.
He believes that architects should make funda-
mental assertions about architecture; for him design
is a thought process. Olgiati’s changes to the
original building are selective and precise; nothing
is arbitrary or random. He relocates the original
street entrance to the eastern facade on the side of
the building and raises it off the ground plane
by a flight of stairs, creating a strip of concrete that
reaches up to become a deep, cantilevered overhang.
These are the only surfaces that have not been
whitewashed, revealing their “naked” surface and
demarcating the entry. The window reveals have
been upgraded with in-situ cast concrete giving the
openings a crisp, exact edge. To create the rustic,
almost archaic surface texture, the old stone facades
were remodeled with hammers and chisels. These
crude surfaces starkly contrast the smooth concrete
additions, though all are unified into a homogeneous
whole by the white lime-wash. In order to heighten
the facade and to create cubic proportions, the
building has been crowned with a band of concrete.

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 The final coat of white, the finest of lime-washes, forms
the outermost skin of the building. It conceals anything left
unfinished. At the same time it points to a certain con-
tradiction. The white lime-wash seems to turn the childlike
archaism and animal substance of this structure into an
abstract thought—which for its part gives the house itself
the appearance of a “vision.”
Valerio Olgiati

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VALERIO OLGIATI
ATELIER BARDILL
SCHARANS
2006–2007
Valerio Olgiati is renowned for his conceptually radical
architecture; his buildings are often confronta-
tional and avant-garde. For Atelier Bardill in Scharans,
south of Chur, Olgiati was commissioned by the
well-known Swiss writer and musician, Linard Bardill
who bought a dilapidated old barn in the center
of the hamlet. Olgiati was not enthusiastic about the
idea of simply renovating the old barn, but neither
were the local residents eager to have an outlandish
piece of modern architecture dominating the
historic fabric of their hamlet. A compromise was
agreed upon to recreate the new building within the
exact silhouette contour of the old barn.
The building Olgiati conceived is not at all what
it seems at first glance. From the outside it looks
monolithic and solid and there is an expectation of
a series of large spaces behind the monolithic
gable roofs. This unspoken promise is not fulfilled
though, as within the walls is only one, single sixty-
square-meter space. This rust-colored space with its
triangular fireplace wedged into the corner is
Bardill’s atelier. Although the building might seem
monolithic, the bulk of the volume is actually a void,
an atrium open to the sky enclosed by walls and
crowned theatrically by an elliptically shaped cutout.
Like an illusionist, Olgiati has conjured up a build-
ing out of thin air in an ironic gesture typical of his
work.
By using the red concrete it has a more natural touch, it is
wilder, like it has grown out of the earth. My white buildings,
on the other hand, are more the product of a disciplined
intellect.
Valerio Olgiati
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By mixing pigment and crushed stone into the
concrete mix, the building mimics the rich brown
tones of the old timber chalets surrounding it, thereby
integrating it into the village. Olgiati has elevated
the material by infusing it with rich color and emboss-
ing it with intricate, handcrafted relief patterns that
wrap the building inside and out, from the eaves to
the ground. The architect is adamant that the random
pattern of rosettes—inspired by the decoration of
an old Baroque chest belonging to Bardill—is a pure
decorative fancy that holds no symbolism. It does
however strengthen the conception of the building as
monolithic and monochrome, while also reducing
the building’s monumentality. The all-encompassing
surface treatment creates a homogeneous whole
within and without, reflecting the way the atelier
oscillates between privacy and openness to the public
and echoing metaphorically the way the lives of
artists vacillate between the introvert solitude of
creation and the extrovert showcasing of their work.
This private /public fluctuation is also reflected
in the building via the large aperture in the western
facade facing the village square. The opening
looks out at the surroundings and affords views of the
alp, Piz Beverin, while also allowing the public a
glimpse into the atrium from the square. This struc-
ture invites one to consider what defines a building:
the facade envelope or the enclosed interior
spaces? Does a building have to have a roof to be
defined as a building? What can be said for certain is
that Olgiati’s architecture is both highly provocative
and aesthetically appealing. It never fails to
surprise.
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A CULTIVATED
ORDINARINESS
Cultural Models in Recent
Swiss Architecture
Irina Davidovici

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Since the 1990s, Swiss architecture has been gaining a steady following. Two Pritzker Prize
winners in one decade, Herzog & de Meuron in 2001 and Peter Zumthor in 2009, as well as a
great number of signature buildings built by Swiss practices in international locations, show
architecture to be one of the country’s most successful exports. This global discourse is dom-
inated by a handful of household names, whose buildings inside and outside Switzerland are
eagerly received and lengthily discussed in the professional and lay press. Architectural tour-
ism has become an established occurrence, not only in the main cities but also in remote
locations in Graubünden and Ticino, where famous architects have been responsible at one
time or another for local public buildings and private houses. The visitors of architectural
landmarks will notice that such special projects do not, however, court the attention of out-
siders. Rather, they are usually engaging in meaningful dialogue with the well built, carefully
maintained environments in which they are located.
Unlike much of Europe, where man-made landscapes are preponderant, those
crossing Switzerland along the most established routes get a high dose of seemingly natural
picturesqueness. Lakes and mountains punctuate every other stretch of high- and railway.
The rural industry is small in scale and tightly controlled, complementing quaint, churched
villages and traditional-looking farmhouses. Suburban sprawl flashes only briefly past the
windshields and billboards, and advertisements are few and far between. In such settings
those accustomed to the big names of Swiss architecture will often spot buildings that look
like tributes to their work. Sleek concrete constructions and sheds abstractly clad in timber
slats fleetingly catch the eye as being designed, rather than expediently constructed. Such
structures are rather ambiguous: on one hand they claim attention through a level of aesthetic
ambition that surpasses their functionality as houses or workshops. On the other hand, by
taking a previously radical architectural statement and normalizing it through repetition, they
relegate it once again to the domain of the functional.
This interplay between anonymous and authored architecture is not surprising
in a country whose sophisticated transport infrastructure of viaducts, bridges, and dams is in
itself a major Baukunst. It is not just that such engineered structures, despite being built for
utility, have an unquestionably emotional effect. They also draw attention to a culturally em-
bedded trait of Swiss production, namely its quality. The demand for precision in the provision
of infrastructure has created a high level of skill within the construction industry, on which
architects have grown used to rely. For this reason concrete structures—whether signaling
stations, houses, or museums—are more frequent here and less controversial than in other
countries; their smoothness both metaphorical and literal. Traditional materials, like timber
and stone, display a similar level of technical know-how, in their case rooted less in industrial
precision than in the craft culture that still characterizes Switzerland’s rural regions. They too
provide sources for contemporaneous architectural work, and not merely as historical prec-
edents. Building in timber is particularly established and thus seen to be the most appropri-
ate material, especially in locations where it is cheap and plentiful, and where the knowledge
of working with it has been passed down through generations.
Just as the dominant materials vary between urban and rural locations, the
architectural strategies that they call into being are also different. Whether the backdrop is
a traditional village or an Alpine range, the implausible picturesqueness of Swiss countryside
serves contemporary architecture very well. Three strategies dominate here, of which the
first—the creation of abstract artifacts like Valerio Olgiati’s Visitor’s Center at Zernez—is of
little relevance to the present discussion of models and copies. Intended to stand out against
their background, such buildings do not lend themselves easily to replication and normaliza-
tion. Their presence is as surprising as it is unique in these areas of outstanding natural beau-
ty, where conservative forces often prevail.

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 A widespread and more ambivalent strategy consists of combining forms or
materials borrowed from traditional architecture with others easily identifiable as being con-
temporary. Olgiati’s atelier for the musician Linard Bardill in Scharans and the little Lieptgas
cabin by Nickisch Walder on the outskirts of Flims are cases in point. While poured in con-
crete, their pitched roofs and compact volumetries precisely replicate the outline of the agri-
cultural structures they have replaced, which is the planning condition for many new devel-
opments in protected rural areas. These predetermined dimensions are not that well suited
to current use: the former building is too big for a musician’s recording studio, the latter rath-
er too small for a full-fledged holiday cabin. Both works, however, use these restrictions
creatively. Olgiati’s project only encloses a third of the outlined volume, allowing the rest to
operate as a hortus conclusus, doubling up as outdoor venue for intimate concerts. Nickisch
and Walder increased the original volume by digging underground and revealing in the process
a natural geological formation, memorably framed in the lower window. Both projects make
use of the fluidity of concrete in order to recall the traditional original structures yet compen-
sate for these with modern radical means, whether red pigment and pattern in the case of the
former or an insulated cast of the previous log cabin in the case of the latter.
The third strategy, the almost complete replication of traditional forms, mate-
rials, and details, consciously removes the distance between the new architecture and its
vernacular models. While seemingly the least radical, this has the most intriguing implica-
tions. On one hand they are most likely to blend unobtrusively with their surroundings and lay
claim to the wholeness of traditional architecture, on the other they can easily be overlooked
as architectural statements with an independent artistic value. Amounting over time to an
infrastructural project, the private houses, small public facilities, and utilitarian structures
built by Gion A. Caminada over the years in his native Vrin employ the materials and construc-
tion methods at hand, placing timber volumes built in the local strickbau technique over stone
bases, in the manner of most existing houses. The buildings use a slightly abstract volumetry
and construction details, but to the untrained eye, the color of new timber is the only mark
distinguishing them from the fabric of the village. While this adoption of traditional means
creates a rapprochement of the architectural object and its intended use, it also makes it hard
to distinguish the authored statements from purely utilitarian structures.
Swiss cities present a different problem, spurred by a typical condition of ano-
nymity. As a rule, existing Swiss urban environments tend towards upholding the existing
norms. Although some practices are interested in producing singular buildings, such develop-
ments are usually relegated to the peripheries. In Zurich or Geneva, where vast opportunities
for rebuilding have recently opened through the relocation of industries, the accent is placed
on replicating a sense of urbanity: high density, vast street fronts, regular grids of openings,
hard landscaping. Commissions are distributed among local and international practices
through professional competitions and collaborations, the heterogeneity of different author-
ships being intended to create an atmosphere of spontaneous, piecemeal development. The
demands for originality of expression on one hand and adherence to recognizable types on the
other give rise to intense, challenging urban experiences.
In city centers there are fewer opportunities for grand architectural statements.
New developments are usually politically sensitive, leading rarely to the creation of “monu-
ments”—one-off prestigious buildings such as museums—and more frequently to “houses,”
in which various programs are concealed behind regular facades similar to that of the pre-
dominant urban types. The generality of such areas is itself intriguing. It is not unusual to walk
past authored buildings published all over the world, and which fit so well in the existing con-
text that they do not attract any particular attention to themselves. Diener & Diener’s resi-
dential and office developments in Basel deliberately blend in with the existing city fabric,
rather than assert themselves as authored architectural artifacts. Replicating the character-
istically anonymous urban types, these projects oscillate between the invisibility of mass-pro-
duced units and autonomous forms. They perpetrate an understanding of the European city
as a cohesive, if heterogeneous, cultural proposition.

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 The theoretical armature behind such developments dates back to the 1970s,
when Swiss architects began experimenting with various techniques to integrate architec-
tural objects into their surroundings. After two post-war decades had almost exhausted the
range of architectural modernism, the Western architectural discourse was once again begin-
ning to view history as a source of inspiration. But, whereas nineteenth-century historicism
had concentrated on heroic models, as if to bestow Classical glory upon prosperous capitalist
societies, after two world wars this discredited notion was viewed with more caution. As
Neorealism and Pop Art would so clearly show, the preferred historical precedents were no
longer the extraordinary and the monumental, but rather the humble and ordinary.
In the Swiss case, the search for culturally relevant precedents revealed two
main models, equally determined by pragmatic rather than purely representational needs. The
oldest, used predominantly in rural situations, was the traditional architecture of peasant
houses and agricultural structures, where the use of stone and timber had in time been
elevated to a high level of skill. The more urban the project, the more ubiquitous, consisting
of modernist housing and industrial developments common in Switzerland since the 1930s.
Originating in a heroic factory aesthetic, this kind of moderate modernism was nevertheless
removed from the radical left-wing ideology associated with the modernist avant-garde of the
1920s. Instead, its longevity was rooted in its capacity to represent the dominance and inter-
ests of an economically prosperous bourgeoisie.
The turn to history in order to make sense of the present situation was theoret-
ically grounded in Postmodernism: namely the use of a doubly coded architecture, targeting
an audience of connoisseurs through sophisticated references, while courting popular appre-
ciation with the use of familiar, widely recognizable design motifs. Although dismissive
of Postmodernism’s eclectic formalism, Swiss architects were strongly influenced by two
key postmodernist thinkers, Aldo Rossi and Robert Venturi. From Rossi’s evocative, yet am-
bivalent notion of “analogous architecture,” they learnt to employ familiar types and forms
that would imbue new buildings with rich associations built over far longer periods of time.
Venturi’s rhetorical question “Is not Main Street almost all right?” signaled a genuine, if slight-
ly condescending interest in everyday environments.¹ For the Swiss, his writings opened a way
of coming to terms with their local versions of “ugly and ordinary architecture.” The industri-
al peripheries, anonymous suburbs, and anodyne housing estates that had characterized the
experiences of growing up in 1950s Switzerland became valid models for the Swiss architec-
tural generation emerging in the late 1970s.
The interest in forms, materials, and environments rendered familiar through
use and repetition was more palpable in the early to mid-1980s. The early projects of Herzog
& de Meuron or Diener & Diener made reference to common urban and suburban types, gar-
dens, and industrial structures. Peter Zumthor, who before setting up his practice had worked
as carpenter and later as conservation architect, found inspiration in the mountain architec-
ture in and around Chur. The adherence to the regional characteristics and cultural referenc-
es of each project gave rise from the outset to a wide and diverging discourse that cannot be
placed simply under the banner of a national Swiss identity. But one thread connecting these
designs was their artistic ambition, not manifested at a conceptual level.
Swiss projects continue to adopt techniques of camouflage by replicating the
forms or materiality of local architecture—a strategy combining artistic or intellectual
reasoning with more pragmatic concessions to planning requirements and popular taste.
Whether aesthetically or politically motivated—frequently a mixture of both—such gestures
of mediation and restraint tend to add, rather than subtract from the merit of the original
artistic impulse. As radical visions encounter the demanding realities of specific locations,
established construction techniques, programmatic requirements, or budget limits, they are
subjected to processes of selection and refinement that result in better, richer, more evoca-
tive designs. Peter Zumthor’s early projects are a demonstration of sorts, grounded in a per-
sonal search for buildings that “give the impression of being a self-evident part of their sur-
roundings, [that] seem to be saying: ‘I am as you see me and I belong here.’”²

187
 This aesthetic of the self-evident is not without ambiguities. In trying to look
“as if it had always been there,” an architecture that replicates the spontaneity of vernacular
or industrial building taps into a rich area of cultural memory. One immediate problem is
the improbability of achieving the so-called “authenticity” of the originals. Artistic ambition
results in differentiation, which implies a degree of alienation. Once conceptualized, the
“self-evident” becomes ever harder to attain. The efforts to replicate the simple and direct
correlations between form, material, and construction found in traditional or utilitarian ar-
chitectures are, generally, neither simple nor direct.
Another problem is that of the fraught relationship of copies to their models.
Once history and tradition start to be used as a repository of forms for contemporary designs,
there is little guidance to establish what constitutes appropriate referencing and what does
not. There is no clear boundary between legitimate quotation and second-rate pastiche. Each
building that bridges tradition and innovation in a genuinely valuable manner will almost
inevitably be followed by a number of diluted copies, replicating the formal or material char-
acter of the original without its intellectual acuity.
In Switzerland, moderation is historically constituted and politically reinforced.
The integration of architectural objects into their environment is part of the local culture, rep-
resenting a manner of social responsibility. The intense scrutiny of vernacular architecture,
its references and quotations in contemporary production are a consequence of this cultural
conditioning. Here, as elsewhere however, a contemporary architecture struggling for defini-
tion has to balance the demands of wider intelligibility with those of artistic ambition.
The issue of influences runs in two directions. While initially, supported by
an intellectual positioning, “high architecture” borrowed from anonymous construction, the
opposite is increasingly the case. Formal devices and technical innovations first articulated
in unique and experimental projects have been absorbed into the mainstream. The greatest
danger in this phenomenon of normalization lies in purely formal reproduction, without an
appropriate level of technical or intellectual circumspection.
The replication is not problematic in itself: at an empirical level, all architecture
is rooted in the reproduction, adoption, and adaptation of precedents. Such processes open
a wide spectrum of possibilities. One extreme is trivial, even morally questionable develop-
ments, intended to compensate through economic gain whatever they lack in cultural value.
At another end are those rare and all the more valuable instances when an anonymous copy
attains the spontaneous correlation of form and purpose that has evaded its more pedigreed
model. The elusive quality of a “self-evident” architecture sometimes results from artistic
ambition being overruled by the demands of reasonableness.

¹ Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.

New York: The Museum of Modern Art Press, 1966, p. 104.
² Zumthor, Peter. Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2006, p. 17.

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BEARTH & DEPLAZES

Creating architecture is like chess, you play against

an opponent, but in effect against yourself. You challenge
yourself—the stronger you are, the better.
Andrea Deplazes

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BEARTH & DEPLAZES
WITH DURISCH + NOLLI
CRIMINAL COURTS
BELLINZONA
2013
Behind a handsomely proportioned, stark white neo-
classical facade, hidden from the view of the general
public, lies an unexpected architectural jewel.
The building, formerly a business school, houses the
federal criminal courts and is situated in the
Italian-speaking canton, Ticino. For the architects—
Valentin Bearth, Andrea Deplazes and Daniel Ladner
in collaboration with Pia Durisch and Aldo Nolli—
it was clear that rather than demolishing the building,
they would renovate and extend the existing
structure, which dates back to 1895. The extension is
seamless: the architects applied the dimensions
of the old building, continued the eaves line, adopted
vertical windows of the same size and proportion
as the original, and continued the color scheme
in bright, white concrete. It has been conceived with
such sensitivity that the new addition is scarcely
noticeable.
On approaching the building from the old city,
the brilliant white facades shine out from the
surrounding urban fabric and, on entering, one is
unprepared for the spatial spectacle that lies behind
the portico, beyond the security lobby and revolv-
ing doors. The progression of intermediary spaces
leads to the lightness and brightness of a courtroom
that flows through concertina folding doors into
another, even higher, even brighter chamber illumi-
nated from a skylight high above. The restraint
and reserve of the lower areas is counterbalanced
by the magnificent vaults that rise up to gather
light from the oculi at their apexes. Massive, precast
triangular concrete elements reflect the triangular
shape of the pyramidal ceiling space. The swir-
ling, organic texture of the surface is not a mere deco-
rative fancy, but serves the vital function of regu-
lating acoustics: audibility is clearly imperative in
a courtroom. The interplay of light on the surface and
the textured pattern is sumptuous and alluring.
There is an echo of ancient Rome here: according to
the architects, the oculus of the Pantheon and
the coffered dome of Borromini’s Baroque San Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane were both inspirations for
the design of the courtrooms.
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Beyond the courtrooms, there is more to discover
and admire in this building: an enormous wall
mural by Giuseppe Bolzani from 1952, which the archi-
tects were obliged to keep due to its historical sig-
nificance. The mural adorns the dark, timber-paneled
cafeteria on the first floor facing the piazza. This
communal area enriches the whole and creates a
counterpoint to the whiteness elsewhere. The library,
encircling the angled ceiling construction on the
second floor, is also noteworthy. It is suspended above
the main courtroom, metaphorically as a kind of
“higher order” of accumulated knowledge. The library
is furnished in deep, smoked oak and is lit from
above with diffuse light. The light courts, where the
stairs are situated that lead up to the offices, slice
through the entire depth of the building and are also
flooded with natural light. Ascending the stairs
towards the light are views across the entire triple-
height volume creating a certain drama. Delicate
touches of gold bronze in the slender balustrades add
a sense of refinement and prestige to the building.
The sheer perfection of the concrete work is
astounding, with the straight, sharp edges and scal-
loped curves of the window reveals displaying
the height of precision craftsmanship. This building
manages to express opulence while being reserved
at the same time; it is concrete proof that it is
possible to revitalize an old building in a respectful,
innovative manner, creating a beautiful new piece of
architecture that captures the zeitgeist of the
twenty-first century.
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BEARTH & DEPLAZES
MONTE ROSA HUT
ZERMATT
2005 – 2009
The area southeast of Zermatt has one of the most
spectacular landscapes in Switzerland. One of
the classic alpine walks is the hike up to the Gorner-
grat, a hard, three-hour trek by foot to the site of
Monte Rosa Hut. Stretched between the Gornergrat
and the Matterhorn is the second largest glacial
system in the Alps and this high-altitude landscape
is a kind of Heilige Welt, or sacred world of rock,
glacier, snow, mountain, sky, where the experience of
nature is an exhilarating experience. To dare to
build in such an awe-inspiring landscape might seem
like a violation; with the opportunity to realize
a mountain hut came a responsibility to build with
great sensitivity.
In celebration of the 150th anniversary the
ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and the
SAC (Swiss Alpine Club) joined forces under the
leadership of the architect Andrea Deplazes to mark
the university’s bicentenary by replacing the
old SAC hut with a new, modern building. Clearly,
constructing a building at an altitude of almost 3,000
meters posed immense logistical and technical
challenges with neither road access, electricity, nor
water. All the building material had to be flown to
the site by helicopter, restricting the weight of each
element to a maximum of 600 kilograms. Site
work was also limited to snow-free summer months,
so the schedule had to be strictly planned. A hut
in such an inaccessible site has to be as self-sufficient
as possible and has to be able to generate as much
of its own energy as possible. Therefore, water is
collected in a cavern and channeled to the hut which,
thanks to wastewater treatment, can be reused
multiple times. Thermal collectors beneath the build-
ing warm the water, while a photovoltaic array
provides electricity. The project was seen as an ex-
perimental laboratory to see how a building in a
remote, inaccessible place high in the Alps can be
self-sufficient and sustainable. Initially the building
created 90% of its energy requirements, but as
visitor numbers far exceeded the original estimates,
upgrades and contingency plans have had to be made
to accommodate the high volume of mountaineers.
200
Completely sheathed in slender bands of shim-
mering silver aluminum, the structure is like a
mountain crystal, as crisp and pristine as the sheer,
snow-capped peaks rising around it. The shape
of the multi-faceted volume was generated partly by
optimizing the orientation and angle of inclination
for the array of photovoltaic panels—the building’s
generator of electricity. Not only does the poly-
gonal form create unusually shaped spaces, it also
optimizes the facade surface area.
The primary structure consists of a radiating,
star-shaped steel platform on concrete pile
foundations, which supports the prefabricated light-
weight timber structure above. Entry to the hut
is through a subterranean level that ascends via
a timber stair to the communal spaces on the ground
level. A slender ribbon window encircles the space
and affords magnificent panoramic views of the
surrounding mountain peaks. Above, on three levels,
trapezoidal-shaped bunkrooms—accommodating
a total of 120 beds—fan out from the central
landing. Inside, the hut is clad in honey-colored wood
creating a warm, intimate atmosphere and an im-
pression of shelter and protection from the harsh
elements on the high Alps.
The clever combination of high-tech and low-
tech has elevated the tradition of alpine huts to new
heights of sustainability and design. Bearth &
Deplazes display a sensitivity for the tectonic nature
of built form and for its ability to transform the
remote, craggy site. The design team has managed
to harness the Ort der Kraft (force of the place)
in their topographic building, with the sheer drama
of the landscape reflected in the spectacular, crys-
talline architecture.
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:MLZD

To achieve good architecture, the architect should have

passion, curiosity, and perseverance.
:mlzd

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:MLZD
EXTENSION OF THE HISTORY MUSEUM
BERN
2006 – 2009
:mlzd’s extension of the Bernese History Museum is
an excellent example of an extension of a historic
building that is neither subservient nor dominant, but
succeeds in creating its own independent standing
and enhances the existing fabric. The addition hides
modestly behind the original museum, which has
a prominent position at the head of Kirchenfeld Bridge
linking Bern Altstadt to Helvetiaplatz across the
Aare River. Approaching the building, one has no
inkling that behind the romantic nineteenth-century
historicism lies a highly contemporary piece of
architecture.
The new volume forms a provocative counterpoint
to the eclectic old building by André Lambert that
dates back to 1894. The design by Biel-based :mlzd
architects is intelligent—a large proportion of
the newly acquired spaces are submerged beneath
the terrain gaining a substantial 1,000-square-meter,
windowless exhibition hall, not visible from the
exterior. The hall—an expansive black void—is the
antithesis of the prominent, light-colored volume
above. Within this column-free void the curators can
assemble and reassemble exhibitions, like erasing
the markings on a blackboard and then redrawing
them anew. Beneath the hall, 3,200 square meters of
storage space is stacked in two layers. The only
visible facade is the “fifth” facade: the roof of the hall,
which is a raised terrace. Although there is a lack
of human activity on the terrace, it nevertheless plays
an important role as it gives the new and old sections
their own domain and spatial integrity.
The southern side of the site is bordered by the
“Titan Tower.” :mlzd have made a contemporary
interpretation of a looming castle tower, which is the
architectural exclamation mark of the project.
Eminent Bernese engineers, Tschopp Engineers played
a critical role in solving the challenging details and
structural scheme of the faceted, crystalline turret.
Interestingly, the tower is not part of the museum, but
accommodates offices, library, and reading room of
the State Archives.
This building is differentiated from the traditional
notion of a building with four vertical walls and
a roof. The volume stands like a concrete crystal with
the rear consisting of five inclined, triangular planes
and a front face that, in contrast, is cut vertical, as
if a stone had been sliced in two to reveal its smooth,
glazed inner core. Captivatingly, the tower as
seen from the north evaporates optically: the highly
reflective glass mirrors the old museum Schloss so
that the tower, itself, disappears. The facade has been
detailed to clip directly onto the concrete crystal
form. It is this mirroring effect and lack of frame that
heighten the effect of dematerialization.
Similar to Herzog & de Meuron’s “Art Space” in
Tenerife, the concrete planes have been incised
with overscaled pixels that are randomly embossed
onto the surface. In some instances the “pixels”
are shallow, in others deeply imprinted, and elsewhere
cut completely through the thirty-five-centimeter-
thick concrete shell to allow spots of sunlight into the
offices. The OSB (oriented strand board) formwork
and the yellow tinted concrete mix imbue the surfaces
with a finely varied patina and texture. The yellow/
gray color of the concrete is perfectly attuned to
the plasterwork patina of Lambert’s historic building.
Together with the brilliant mirror reflection, this
reference creates a fascinating interplay and dialogue
between old and new. :mlzd’s extension radiates
a new energy to the museum precinct and creates a
modern, twenty-first century landmark for Switzer-
land’s capital city.

The sequence of the three different outdoor spaces—

“garden,” “square,” and “stairway”—ensures that the new
structure dovetails with the pre-existing ensemble
and blends into its urban environment.
:mlzd

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STUDIO VACCHINI

Architecture in Switzerland and in the world today

is increasingly a matter of form. What our work tries to
propose instead is the development of technology,
not in the service of style or form, but rather of human
society.
Eloisa Vacchini

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STUDIO VACCHINI
SPORTS CENTER MÜLIMATT
WINDISCH
2010

In a country that takes its sports seriously and where

the winters are long and cold, indoor sports facili-
ties are essential for year-round training. The chal-
lenge faced by Locarno-based Studio Vacchini was to
create a sports hall for the University of Applied
Sciences Northwestern Switzerland FHNW without
structural inner walls or column supports. Together
with engineers, Fürst Laffranchi, Studio Vacchini
managed to push the boundaries of technology with
their fifty-five-meter-wide, support-free gymnasium.
Situated between the Aare River and the railway
line, the sports center is an easy five-minute walk
from Brugg railway station. It is the elaborate concrete
surfaces that immediately strike one. The interior
houses two large sports halls with tribunes and
service spaces. The delicate concrete structure has
been designed with the clarity and precision of
a Swiss watch. Like a giant accordion, the slender
concrete pulls open to create a dynamic zigzag
rhythm of solid and glazed peaks and troughs. It is
not only the strength of the design, but also the
absolute precision and delicacy of the concrete work
that is outstanding. Typically sports halls are color-
ful spaces, but here Vacchini has continued the muted
gray color palette of the exterior facades inside
the gymnasium halls, creating a calm, cool atmos-
phere. It is the sportsmen and women who bring color
and movement into the light-filled spaces.
The slight incline of the terrain results in a portion
of the lower level being subterranean. Service areas,
like changing rooms and showers, are neatly tucked
away. Access stairs to the lower level in the center
of the eighty-meter structure divide the hall into two
generous spaces, each with three basketball courts.
This self-supporting structure without inner
structural walls is a feat of modern engineering. Studio
Vacchini has clearly combined intellectual rigor
with technical know-how. Not only did the architects
achieve their ambitious goal, but they also managed
to create a masterful piece of architecture that, like
a folded origami sculpture, is both delicate and strong.

The technique and technology enable man to rise to higher

limits, to make the construction of spaces more precise
and more exciting.
Studio Vacchini

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EM2N

We approach the permanent state of crisis of our built

environment, neither with irony nor drama, but rather with
a cold look at what is.
EM2N

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EM2N
SWISS RAILWAYS SERVICE FACILITY
ZURICH
2013

The extensive train network in Switzerland is widely

known for its efficiency and punctuality. As the
country is so compact, it is feasible to live in one city
and commute to another. It is not uncommon to
forgo owning a car, as the public transport system
is sophisticated and wide ranging, so that even
the most remote valleys and mountain villages can
be reached by rail, bus, or cable car. The reliability of
the rail network has meant ever-increasing numbers
of rail passengers, with trains having to increase
in length to accommodate greater numbers. The new
four-hundred-meter rail facility in Zurich caters
for these excessively long trains. As the site was pre-
determined and the structure predefined by engi-
neers, the assignment for the architects had design
limitations. Their sole task was to create an enve-
lope to wrap the southern facade. Using five-meter
elements that widen and narrow in interlocking
waves, the architects have expressed the facade in
three dimensions. It might appear like a large,
inflatable structure, but the curtain-wall of the
facade is made with glass-fiber reinforced concrete.
By omitting individual concrete elements, long,
horizontal fissures are created allowing light and
views into the interior workshop areas. The curvature
profile of the concrete units decreases in the
lower section of the facades to allow access for fire
engines. The slow, undulating lines are an apt
articulation for a rail service building and reflect the
linear dynamic of the fast-moving trains along the
tracks. As a preventive measure, the surfaces were
treated with a hydrophobic membrane to protect
them from graffiti.
The exit and entry on the short facades are com-
pletely glazed from floor to ceiling and are recessed,
creating the impression of continuity, as if it were
merely a section of a building that could be extended
indefinitely. Within the constraints of a tight budget,
EM2N were able to design a distinctive building
that enhances the area along the railway tracks. What
might have been an industrial wasteland has instead
been transformed into an artistically expressive site.

Through its central position next to the rapidly developing

new neighborhood of Zurich-West and by virtue of its
sheer size, the new building acquires great urban signifi-
cance. It shapes the edge of the city towards the rail-
way tracks and welcomes visitors entering the city by train,
signaling that they are arriving in Zurich’s city center.
EM2N

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CONDITIONS OF
PRACTICE
Jean-Paul Jaccaud

238
The prevailing winds of global contemporary practice are blowing architects towards the in-
creasingly marginal position of providing a je ne sais quoi of veneer over a construction pro-
cess that they no longer control or even fully understand. If these winds do blow through the
alpine landscapes of Switzerland, they have not yet had the same devastating effects as in
other countries where the voice of the architect has become difficult to hear over the clatter
of indifferent clients, large design teams, standardized industrial solutions, and economic
constraints.
Swiss architects, seen within the main global trends of the profession, enjoy
conditions of practice somewhere between a dream come true and a fragile anachronism. It
would be a mistake to idealize Swiss architectural production; there are an incalculable num-
ber of dreadful buildings being erected every year. Though somehow a high level of control has
been maintained over the process of design and construction, enabling the production of an
architecture that maintains its coherence from the urban scale through to the fine detail. How
exactly this has come about is a complex question that cannot easily be answered. I believe,
however, that certain key aspects have played an important role in establishing the strong
architectural culture that the country enjoys and I would like to attempt an informal explora-
tion of what some of these aspects might be.
Swiss architects’ responsibilities cover many different aspects of the construc-
tion process that, in other countries, would be left to other professions. They are not only re-
sponsible for the design of their projects, they must also ensure their cost estimate and con-
trol, the coordination of the design team, and the management of the construction site. If this
breadth of competences and know-how ensures a unique level of control, the most important
specificities, in my view, lie in the control of the construction site process and the costs. If
main contractors abound in Switzerland, there is still a very strong presence of specialized
trades whose know-how is ensured by a well-established apprenticeship system. Projects are
still mostly allocated to different specialist contractors whose work is coordinated on site by
the architect. This role, one of a main contractor in other countries, enables the architect to
keep an extremely tight control over every aspect of the construction process and ensures
that little is lost in translation between drawings and their implementation. The control of
costs, from the initial estimate through to the detailed quantities and unit prices on site en-
ables, in tandem with the site management, a clear understanding of what is being bought,
where the money is spent, and what is being cut if savings are required. Several factors have
contributed to this privileged position: principally a framework of historically rooted associ-
ations defending the interests of the profession and an education system that encourages a
detailed understanding of the construction process.
Professional associations have played a significant historical role in Swiss ar-
chitectural culture. The two principal bodies, the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects
(SIA) and the Federation of Swiss Architects (BSA-FAS) were founded respectively in 1837 and
1908 and have been continuously active in defending different aspects of the profession. If
the SIA encompasses a broader professional scope of engineering and architecture, the BSA-
FAS solely defends the interests of architects and both bodies frequently work in tandem. The
work of the professional associations has been crucial in ensuring a clear definition and un-
derstanding of the architect’s role, as well as contractual and financial conditions that enable
a high quality of work to be carried out. While this might sound obvious, it is far from being
the case in most countries and rarely is the role, scope of works, and fee structure so clearly
established. The framework provided enables Swiss architects to provide a great deal of clar-
ity when discussing a commission with their clients and expectations can therefore be clear-
ly understood. Architectural competitions play a major role in Swiss architectural culture and
the professional associations have historically defended them from the start for their organ-
ization, their supervision, and for maintaining independent professional juries.

239
 The 1980s and 1990s saw profound changes in the economic, cultural, and tech-
nical aspects of the profession and their effects on urbanism and architecture were the sub-
ject of heated debate. This led to the establishment, in 1996, of the inter-cantonal laws for the
tender of public projects, which ensure that all public projects are systematically subject to
anonymous, project-based competitions with independent professional juries. This not only
provides a basis for a strong architectural culture, but also ensures that less established
practices have access to commissions on the sole basis of the quality of their work. The flu-
idity of this system keeps everyone within the profession on their toes and ensures that cro-
nyism and backhand commissions are absent from the landscape of public commissions.
Younger practices benefit immensely from this system that provides constant fresh proposi-
tions and ensures debate, discussion, and the permanent questioning of established ideas. It
is interesting to see that most of the leading practices working in Switzerland today were
established through the competition system and that their work continues to evolve through
the constant pressure of a highly competitive environment.
Most of the younger practices that would benefit from the competition system
have been formed in Switzerland and there is an almost uncanny level of continuity between
the educative institutions and the profession. Adolf Loos famously described the architect
as a stonemason who has learned Latin, while Swiss schools continue to favor masonry as a
vital ingredient of the curriculum. The Anglo-Saxon culture, among others, puts a strong
emphasis on Latin during the formative years, anticipating that the masonry will be learnt
through practice after graduation. Young architects are, in this case, carrying out an informal
master’s degree in the practices where they choose to work and the education system has
largely outsourced the nuts and bolts aspects to the professional world.
The Swiss architectural education rests on three different pillars. The two Fed-
eral Institutes of Technology, in Zurich and Lausanne, the HES-SO technical schools, and ap-
prenticeships. If the first two essentially concern future architectural practitioners, the latter
provides an education to both architects and specialist contractors who will play an essential
role in the construction process. In all instances students are exposed to the multidisciplinary
aspects of architecture and are brought in close contact with engineers and construction
methods to ensure that their skills will enable them to inscribe their future work within a
clearly defined system. This approach has led to a specific grammar of the architectural cul-
ture with construction as its bedrock and a common tectonic ground. Practice and education
intertwine in many instances and feed off each other, making student end-of-year shows a
synthesis of current positions within the professional debate and competition entries often
influenced by student investigations.
Apart from a short period of dismay following May 1968, particularly in the
French-speaking part of the country, where social studies became preponderant, the Swiss
architectural education has always been based on the Beaux-Arts notion of the studio, l’ate­
lier, where projects are produced in conditions close to that of practice. This leads to an un-
derstanding of the methods of professional practice and generally steers clear of abstract
theoretical ground. Part of the curriculum of the architectural training also involves a year-out
of work experience within architectural practices. The students who have worked in a practice
frequently return after their graduation as full architects, and diploma projects inevitably re-
veal where students have spent their year out by the mimetic nature of the work presented.

240
 The strength of the professional associations, the high levels of control on the
project development, and construction, the common ground of construction as a basis for
architectural expression, the competition system, and a solid educational backing, all these
factors unite to give architectural practice a strong foundation on which to develop. Switzer-
land is a small country but an extraordinarily diverse one culturally, linguistically, and topo-
graphically. The foundations laid for conditions of practice enable very different expressions
to emerge confidently from this diversity and one would be hard pressed to find a constant in
contemporary Swiss architectural culture. The architectural freedom that the conditions of
practice give is liberating for the profession, allowing extremely different forms of expression
to emerge without the insecurity of having to conform to a dogma to establish one’s identity.
Many attempts have been made to pigeonhole Swiss architecture as a coherent whole, the
“Swiss box” of the late 1990s being the most publicized. I do not find this approach interesting
or helpful to understand the current architectural culture. It is in my view more through con-
ditions of practice that Swiss architecture finds its specificity, and the different formal pro-
posals that can emerge from them are only a manifestation of the healthy foundations on
which these complex and shifting constructions are based.

241
 BIOGRAPHIES
Anna Roos
Anna Roos studied architecture at the University of Cape
Town and obtained a postgraduate degree at the Bartlett School
of Architecture at UCL, London under the professorship of
Niall McLaughlin. Moving to Bern, Switzerland in 2000, she worked
as an architect, designing projects in South Africa, Australia,
and Scotland. She has been working as a freelance architectural
journalist since 2007 and writes for c3, A10, Ensuite Kultur
Magazin, Monocle magazine, and Swisspearl Architecture maga­
zine. She also copyedits books for numerous publishing houses in
Germany and Switzerland including: Lars Müller Publishers,
Birkhäuser Verlag, DOM, Gestalten, DETAIL Green, and Prestel
Publishers. Anna seeks to convey her passion for architecture in
her writing about the discipline.
R. James Breiding
R. James Breiding is author of Swiss Made—The Untold Story
Behind Switzerland’s Success. Available in seven languages,
the book has become the most authoritative work on “Swissness.”
His articles on Swiss issues appear in The Economist, Finan­
cial Times, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, and the Wall Street
Journal. He was elected a fellow at Harvard’s Center for Inter-
national Development, and is the founder and owner of Naissance
Capital, a Zurich-based investment firm.
Jean-Paul Jaccaud
Jean-Paul Jaccaud was born in Hong Kong in 1971. He studied
architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
(EPFL) where he graduated in 1995. Jaccaud collaborated
with Bernard Huet, David Chipperfield, and Herzog & de Meuron
before opening his own practice, Jean-Paul Jaccaud Architects
in Geneva, in 2004. In 2011, in partnership with Tanya Zein, he
founded Jaccaud Zein Architects in London. In 2014 Lionel Spicher
became a full partner of the Geneva practice which was subse-
quently renamed Jaccaud Spicher Associated Architects.
Jaccaud has been visiting professor at the Federal Institute
of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and at the Université Catholique
de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium and has been a visiting critic at
numerous architecture schools in Europe, the USA, and the Middle
East.
Irina Davidovici
Architect and academic Irina Davidovici is the author of Forms
of Practice. German­Swiss Architecture 1980–2000 (gta Verlag,
2012). Born in Bucharest and based in Zurich and London,
she draws in her writings on multilayered professional and cultural
experiences, bridging the practice, teaching, and critical inter-
pretation of architecture. Currently she is engaged in post-doctoral
research and Habilitation project at the gta Chair for the History
of Urban Design, ETH Zurich, studying the autonomy and
integration of high-density housing estates in the European city.
Niall McLaughlin
Niall McLaughlin was born in Geneva in 1962. He was educated
in Dublin and received his architectural qualifications from
University College Dublin in 1984. He worked for Scott Tallon Walker
in Dublin and London between 1984 and 1989. He established
his own practice in London in 1990. Niall McLaughlin Architects
makes high quality modern buildings with a special emphasis on
materials and detail. McLaughlin won Young British Architect
of the Year in 1998, he was one of the BBC Rising Stars in 2001, and
his work represented Britain in a US exhibition Gritty Brits at the
Carnegie Mellon Museum. His designs have won many awards
in the UK, Ireland, and the USA, including RIAI Best Building in the
Landscape and the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Award for the Best
Building under £1million and was on the RIBA Stirling Shortlist 2013
and 2015. McLaughlin is a professor of architecture at Univer-
sity College London as well as a visiting professor at the University
of California Los Angeles from 2012 to 2013 and appointed
Lord Norman Foster Visiting Professor of Architecture, Yale for
2014–2015. He was chair of the RIBA Awards Group from 2007 to
2009. He lives in London with his wife Mary, son Diarmaid, and
daughter Iseult.
Bearth & Deplazes
Valentin Bearth (1957) studied at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology Zurich (ETH) and received his degree in 1983 under
Prof. Dolf Schnebli. Between 1984 and 1988 he was employed
at Atelier Peter Zumthor. In 1988, Bearth established an office with
Andrea Deplazes. Since 2000, Bearth has been a design profes-
sor at the Accademia di Architettura of the Università della
Svizzera Italiana in Mendrisio and between 2007 and 2011 Bearth
was the director of the school.
Andrea Deplazes (1960) studied at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology Zurich (ETH) and received his degree in 1988 under
Prof. Fabio Reinhardt. In 1988, Deplazes established an office
with Valentin Bearth. Since 1997 he has been professor for
architecture and construction at the Department of Architecture
at the ETH in Zurich and between 2005 and 2007 was the head
of the Department of Architecture at the ETH.
Daniel Ladner (1959) did an apprenticeship as a mason and
was trained as a draftsman specializing in structural engineering.
In 1988 Ladner graduated from the Abendtechnikum HTL
in Chur. Between 1989 and 1994 Ladner was employed at Bearth
& Deplazes and from 1995 to 2000 was a partner there. Since
2001, Landner shares the office with Bearth & Deplazes.
During the past two decades, the office has been awarded
numerous prizes, including, in 1999, the 6th Mies van der Rohe
Award, an international award for European architecture; in 2008,
the Balthasar Neumann Prize and the Holcim Bronze Award
Europe for Monte-Rosa Hut; and in 2010 the Swiss Solar Prize for
their winery Gantenbein.
Buchner Bründler
Buchner Bründler was founded by Daniel Buchner and Andreas
Bründler in Basel in 1997. The firm is composed of a team of
about thirty architects, interior designers, and designers. Activi-
ties include urban planning and development, realization of public
buildings, residential, and service buildings, as well as interior
design in Switzerland and abroad. Context and space play a central
role in their work, which is characterized by a continuous study
of and experimentation with form, light, materiality, and color.
Their projects are designed taking into account the specific loca-
tion and concepts involved. Realization follows intensive dis-
course with the clients and future users.
The firm is also renowned for their work in a larger urban devel-
opment context. Projects outside Switzerland are an increasing
source of work for the firm. The renovation of the GA-200
rooms in the UN headquarters in New York was completed in 2003,
and subsequently presented to the UN as a gift from Switzerland.
After successful completion of a pavilion in the Jinhua Archi-
tecture Park in China, the Swiss pavilion at the Shanghai World
Expo was completed in 2010. Projects designed and executed by
Buchner Bründler have been awarded numerous prizes and
published in national and international architecture journals.
In 2003, the firm received one of the most important Swiss cultural
awards, the Swiss Art Award in Architecture and, in 2013, the
Beton 13 prize for Casa d’Estate Linescio and Bläsiring House.
The architects have devoted themselves to teaching and research
and give lectures in Switzerland and abroad on a regular basis.
They taught at the EPF Lausanne from 2007 to 2009 and have been
active as design lecturers at the ETH Zurich since 2010.
Gion A. Caminada
Gion A. Caminada works as an architect in Vrin, Graubünden.
After his apprenticeship as a carpenter, he attended the School of
Applied Art in Zurich. Subsequently, he completed his post-
graduate degree in architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology Zurich (ETH). Since 2008, Caminada has also been
professor of architecture at the ETH in Zurich.
Jürg Conzett
Citizen of Schiers (Graubünden), Jürg Conzett (1956) studied civil
engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
(ETH) in Lausanne and Zurich and received his diploma in 1980.
From 1981 until 1988 he worked as an employee of architect Peter
Zumthor in Haldenstein. After this architectural experience he
decided to start working as an independent consultant structural
engineer. Today he heads an engineer’s office of about 25 people
together with his partners Gianfranco Bronzini and Patrick
Gartmann in Chur. Their main activities are designing structures
for buildings together with architects, as well as working on
projects for bridges and bridge repairs. Conzett taught structures
at the Fachhochschule Chur for about 20 years. In 2011, he had
a three-month tenure teaching at the Graduate School of Design at
Harvard University.
 Diener & Diener
The architecture office Marcus Diener Architect (founded in
1942), changed its name to Diener & Diener in 1980. Today Diener
& Diener has offices in Basel and Berlin. Along with its subsidiary
in Berlin, the Basel office has been headed by Roger Diener,
together with Terese Erngaard, Andreas Rüedi, and Michael Roth
who have been partners since 2011.
Originally focusing on residential projects, the firm now also
systematically develops urban-planning projects, as well as pro-
jects for the renovation and extension of historic buildings.
The basis of their designs is a perception of the European city in
all its variety and continuity. During the past 15 years, several
projects have been developed on the basis of a consistent coopera-
tion with artists—for instance the Novartis Headquarters in
Basel with Helmut Federle. Recent projects include the reconstruc-
tion of the east wing of the Museum of Natural History at Humboldt
University, Berlin, and the Mémorial de la Shoah in Drancy, Paris.
In 1976, the Basel architect Roger Diener (1950) graduated
from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) and
joined the firm Marcus Diener Architect, the practice his father
had founded in Basel in 1942. He was made partner in 1980.
In 1987–1989 Roger Diener was a professor at the École Polytech-
nique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He has been a professor
at the ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Studio
Basel) since 1999. The Académie d’Architecture in Paris honored
his work with the Grande Médaille d’Or in 2002. He was awarded
the Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2009. In 2011 Diener was awarded the
Heinrich Tessenow Gold Medal.
EM2N
Mathias Müller (1966) and Daniel Niggli (1970) studied architec-
ture together at the ETH in Zurich. Their office, EM2N, was
established in Zurich in 1997 and is currently based in Zurich and
Berlin. With their 75 employees, they work on construction and
competition projects in Switzerland and abroad. In addition to
numerous other prizes, including the price Regards­Sguardi, EM2N
received the Swiss Art Prize for Architecture in 2004. Müller and
Niggli have been guest professors at the ETH Lausanne and the
ETH Zurich and are also members of the Building Councils of Berlin
and Zurich.
Andreas Fuhrimann Gabrielle Hächler
Gabrielle Hächler (1958) studied art history at Zurich University
and architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Zurich (ETH), receiving her degree in 1988. Hächler was employed
for four years as assistant lecturer in the Department of Con-
struction at the ETH Zurich. She established her own architectural
office in 1988 and, since 1995, has been in partnership with Andreas
Fuhrimann. Between 2009 and 2011 she was visiting professor
at the ETH Zurich and, from 2012 to 2014, professor at UdK Berlin.
Andreas Fuhrimann (1956) studied physics and architecture
at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), receiving
his architecture degree in 1985. After a year in the architectural
office Marbach + Rüegg, Fuhrimann collaborated with Christian
Karrer from 1987. In 1988 he lectured interior architecture
at the School of Design and Crafts. He established an office with
Gabrielle Hächler in 1995. Between 2009 and 2011 Fuhrimann
was visiting professor at the ETH Zurich and, from 2012 to 2014,
professor at UdK Berlin.
Carlo Fumarola (1978) studied architecture at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), receiving his architecture
degree in 2005. Since 2005, Fumarola has been employed at
Andreas Fuhrimann Gabrielle Hächler. Between 2009 and 2011 he
was assistant lecturer at the ETH and since 2012 has been a
partner at Andreas Fuhrimann Gabrielle Hächler.
Gilbert Isermann (1978) studied architecture at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), receiving his architecture
degree in 2004. From 2004 to 2007 Isermann was employed at
Gigon Guyer Architekten and since 2007 he has been employed at
Andreas Fuhrimann Gabrielle Hächler, becoming a partner in 2012.
Herzog & de Meuron
Herzog & de Meuron is a partnership led by Jacques Herzog
and Pierre de Meuron together with three senior partners:
Christine Binswanger, Ascan Mergenthaler, and Stefan Marbach.
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron established their office
in Basel in 1978. The partnership has grown over the years—
Christine Binswanger joined the practice as partner in 1994,
followed by Robert Hösl and Ascan Mergenthaler in 2004, Stefan
Marbach in 2006, Esther Zumsteg in 2009, Andreas Fries
in 2011, Jason Frantzen and Wim Walschap in 2014, and Michael
Fischer in 2016. An international team of about 40 associates
and 380 collaborators is working on projects across Europe,
the Americas, and Asia. The firm’s main office is in Basel with addi-
tional offices in Hamburg, London, New York City, and Hong Kong.
Herzog & de Meuron has designed a wide range of projects
from the small scale of a private home to the large scale of urban
design. While many of their projects are highly recognized public
facilities, such as their stadiums and museums, they have also
completed several distinguished private projects including apart-
ment buildings, offices, and factories. The practice has been
awarded numerous prizes including The Pritzker Architecture Prize
(USA) in 2001, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal (UK) and the Praemium
Imperiale (Japan), both in 2007. In 2014, Herzog & de Meuron were
awarded the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP).
Miller & Maranta
Quintus Miller (1961) studied architecture at the ETH Zurich;
receiving his degree in 1987. From 1990 to 1994 Miller was design
assistant at the EPF Lausanne and at the ETH Zurich. In 1994,
he established his own office in Basel, Miller & Maranta, with Paola
Maranta. From 2000 to 2001, Miller was visiting professor at EPF
Lausanne and from 2007 to 2008 he was guest professor at the
Accademia di Architettura of the Università della Svizzera Italiana
in Mendrisio. From 2008 to 2010 he was visiting professor at
the ETH Zurich. Since 2009, Miller has been full professor for archi-
tecture at the Accademia di Architettura of the Università della
Svizzera Italiana in Mendrisio. From 2004 to 2008, Miller was a
member of the commission for urban planning and architecture of
Lucerne, as well as on the commission for visual arts in Riehen.
Since 2005, Miller has been active in the commission for historic
preservation of the cities Zurich and Basel.
Paola Maranta (1959) studied architecture at the EPF Lausanne
and at the ETH Zurich graduating in 1986. In 1990, Maranta com-
pleted a Master of Business Administration at the IMD in Lausanne.
From 1991 to 1994 she was a management consultant in Zurich
and in 2000 to 2001 visiting professor at EPF Lausanne. In 1994, she
established Miller & Maranta with Quintus Miller in Basel. From
2007 to 2008 she was visiting professor at the Accademia di
Architettura of the Università della Svizzera Italiana, Mendrisio
and from 2008 to 2010 she was guest professor at the ETH Zurich.
From 2001 to 2005 Maranta was a member of the commission
for urban planning and architecture Basel and since 2003 she has
been a member of the city commission in Riehen near Basel.
Jean-Luc von Aarburg (1975) studied architecture at the EPF
Lausanne, the TU Delft, and the ETH Zurich. Since his graduation in
2001, von Aarburg has been collaborating with Miller & Maranta.
In 2013 he became a partner at Miller & Maranta. Von Aarburg was
guest professor at the ETH Zurich in 2010.
:mlzd
Partners: Claude Marbach, Pat Tanner, Daniele Di Giacinto,
David Locher, Andreas Frank. :mlzd was established in Biel/Bienne
in 1997. It is the workplace of a versatile team of architects,
who have to date won more than 30 first prizes in international
competitions and have more than 40 completed building projects to
their name. The work of the practice covers a broad spectrum.
Its most important projects include the renovation of the presi-
dential anterooms to the United Nations General Assembly Hall in
New York (2004), as well as extensions to the History Museum
in Bern (2009) and the Local-Heritage Museum in Rapperswil (2011).
:mlzd currently has 30 employees, whose internal discussions
give rise to vastly varied projects. One characteristic that all the
projects have in common, however, is the self-assured and highly
respectful attitude towards the architectural setting and their
love of detail.
 Nickisch Walder ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Selina Walder studied her diploma at the Accademia di
Architettura Mendrisio under Valerio Olgiati in 2004. From 2004 Many thanks for the support and encouragement of:
to 2006 she taught as an assistant at his chair for architectural Peter Zumthor, Ralf Daab, Alexander Felix, Katharina Kulke,
design. Since 2004, she has been working independently in Res Eichenberger, Adriano Biondo, Andri Pol, Sylwia Chomentowska,
her own office in Flims—since 2005 with Georg Nickisch. In 2009/ Olga Funk, Quintus Miller, Jørg Himmelreich, Jean-Paul Jaccaud,
2010 Walder curated the exhibition “DADO—Built and Inhabited Irina Davidovici, Niall McLaughlin, James Breiding, Gaudenz
by Rudolf Olgiati and Valerio Olgiati.” Danuser, Wilfried Dechau, Matthieu Gafsou, Michael Hanak, Hugo
Georg Nickisch studied at the Prince of Wales Institute of Bütler, Elena Pascolo, Stephen Gelb, David Best, Melanie Best,
Architecture (UK), the University of Bath (UK) and studied his degree Magriet Cruywagen, Ernst Steinmann, Mascia Buzzolini, Bruno
in architecture at the Accademia di Architettura Mendrisio Tobler (Foto Vision), Marianne Gauer, Peter Dömötör, Petra Küchler,
under Peter Zumthor in 2005. Between 2007 and 2013, he taught Nicky Boustred, Tkalcec Hrvoje, and especially to Louise and
as an assistant at the chair of Jonathan Sergison (Sergison Bates Conal Gain for their help and support with copyediting and to my
Architects). In 2008 Selina Walder and Georg Nickisch won husband, Hendrik, who has shared this long journey with me. Finally,
the competition for the new auditorium building at the Plantahof thank you also to all the architects and photographers whose
Landquart in collaboration with Valerio Olgiati. In 2010 they valuable contribution made this publication possible.
won the first prize in a competition for an apartment building and
the refurbishment of a heritage-protected farmhouse in Davos.
In the same year they won a private competition for a villa situated PHOTO CREDITS
in Thurgau. In 2011, Nickisch Walder was awarded the second
prize in an open competition for the chancellery of the Swiss Tonatiuh Ambrosetti 191–194, 201–204
embassy in Nairobi. Adriano Biondo 5, 25, 53, 121, 219
Iwan Baan 61, 64 (top)
Valerio Olgiati Hélène Binet 123, 132
Valerio Olgiati (1958) studied architecture at the ETH Zurich. Markus Bühler-Rasom 62, 63, 64 (bottom)
Having lived and worked first in Zurich and later in Los Angeles for Gaudenz Danuser 81, 83–88, 91– 93, 94 (bottom)
some years, he opened his own practice in Zurich in 1996 and Wilfried Dechau 113, 115, 116
then, in 2008, together with his wife, Tamara, in Flims. Olgiati ini- Lucia Degonda 105 –109
tially received international attention in 1999 with his museum Federal Office of Topography swisstopo front endpaper
project, The Yellow House in Flims, Switzerland. He created an icon Ralph Feiner 94 (top), 209
with his 2008 competition-winning entry for the Museum of Leonardo Finotti 55, 56
Contemporary Art in Perm, Russia. Olgiati’s most important build- Roger Frei 231, 232, 233, 234 (top)
ings include the schoolhouse in Paspels, the museum The Yellow Matthieu Gafsou 1, 247
House in Flims, the House for a Musician in Scharans, the resi- Alexander Gempeler 211– 214
dential complex Schleife in Zug, and Villa Além in Alentejo. Major Christian Grund 143
projects in planning are the winery for Carnasciale in Italy, the Maurice Haas 189, 229
high-rise building San Felipe in Lima, a house for a priest in Bavaria, Thomas Jantscher 45–149, 153–158
and a building for the headquarters of Baloise insurance company Valentin Jeck 163 –166
in Basel. There are numerous monographs about his oeuvre. Alexandre Kapellos 221
A major solo exhibition of his work took place 2012 at MoMa Tokyo. Antonio Martinelli 130, 131
Among other academic engagements he led the Kenzo Tange Simon Menges 234 (bottom)
Chair at Harvard University in 2009. Since 2002, Olgiati has been Giuseppe Micciché 27, 28, 30, 42– 44
a full Professor at the Accademia di Architettura Mendrisio at Archive Olgiati 173–175, 180 –182
the Università della Svizzera Italiana. Andri Pol 99, 161
Stephan Rappo 171
Savioz Fabrizzi Christian Richters 73–76
Savioz Fabrizzi was founded in 2004 by architects Laurent Savioz Hendrik Roos 124, 125, 129
(1976) and Claude Fabrizzi (1975). The office provides all archi- René Rötheli 222, 223, 224
tectural services from design through to realization. Their approach Ruedi Walti 7–12, 17–20, 29, 33–36, 41
is based on the analysis of a site in its natural or built state to Dominique Marc Wehrli 179
identify the essential elements to enhance or preserve it. In this
way they believe they can strengthen the cultural role of architec- Swiss map and all architectural plans orientated with North point
ture based on the analysis of function, program, place in history, vertically up.
and the culture of a region.

Studio Vacchini
Eloisa Vacchini is associate architect at Studio Vacchini.
She received her architecture degree from Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology, Lausanne in 1997. Employed at various architec-
tural practices in Sydney, Australia (1994–1995). Worked at Daniel
D’Andrea Architects in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1998–1999).
Here Vacchini focused on a commission to refurbish buildings in
Havana at the invitation of the Cuban government. Between
1999 and 2007, Vacchini was employed at the Studio di architettura
Livio Vacchini based in Locarno. In April 2007, she became an
associate architect at Studio Vacchini.

Peter Zumthor
Peter Zumthor was born in Basel in 1943 and grew up in Oberwil,
Baselland. Between 1958 and 1962 he trained as cabinet-
maker at the workshop of his father, Oscar Zumthor. From 1963 to
1967 he studied design and architecture at the Kunstgewerbe-
schule Basel, as well as at the Pratt Institute, New York. From 1967,
Zumthor was employed as building and planning consultant
and documenter of historical villages with the Department for the
Preservation of Monuments, Canton of Graubünden in Switzer-
land. In addition he realized various renovations. In 1978, Zumthor
established his own architectural practice in Haldenstein,
Switzerland. He was visiting professor at Southern California
Institute of Architecture, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles (1988); at the Tech-
nische Universität Munich (1989) and at the Graduate School of
Design, Harvard University (1999). Between 1996 and 2008 Zumthor
was professor at the Accademia di Architettura, Università della
Svizzera Italiana, Mendrisio.
Selection of Zumthor’s many awards: Mies van der Rohe Award
for European Architecture, Barcelona (1998); Prix Meret Oppenheim,
Switzerland (2006); Praemium Imperiale, Japan Art Association
(2008); The Pritzker Architecture Prize, The Hyatt Foundation
(2009); RIBA Royal Gold Medal, Royal Institute of British Architects
(2013); Nike, Architecture Prize, Bund Deutscher Architekten
BDA (2013)
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