EM2N Architekten   Switzerland   How do we want to work tomorrow? That is the question that EM2N set out to answer in designing the building located at Binzstrasse in Zurich. From the start of the project it was clear that the Swiss practice would itself take part of the rental spac

Weyell Zipse Architekten    Switzerland   This project by the Basel firm of Christian Weyell and Kai Zipse is the outcome of a 2018 competition. On a tract of land of about 7,600 square meters, the Guggach elementary school in Zurich makes space for twelve classrooms organized in symmetrical

Boltshauser Architekten   Switzerland   The tower, measuring eight meters tall, functions as viewing deck, exhibition space, and furnace. Timber boards are added to the pre-stressed pieces of adobe and steel that form the walls to make their transportation easier in case of disassembly...

Esch Sintzel Architekten   Switzerland   The concrete structure of a wine storage facility has been reused to create a new residential building, thereby significantly minimizing the energy consumed in its construction. Thick pillars in the lower levels, crowned with a truncated cone-shaped

GWJ   Switzerland   Six blocks have gone up around an inner street towards which the more public zones are oriented with the intention of consolidating a small but very active neighborhood. Attached to the blocks, which contain over a hundred living units, timber framew

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   Situated between the Münsterhügel and the former outer city wall, the area known as St. Alban-Vorstadt represents one of Basel’s first early medieval expansions and has largely retained its historic character. In 2017, the Christoph Merian Foundation

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   Located in Allschwil’s industrial area, east of the city of Basel, the new BaseLink technology campus plans to build more than 75.000 square meters devoted to technology and innovation. The new campus houses HORTUS, which stands for House of Research

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The hermitage Hotel, located on the shore of Lake Lucerne and facing Mount Pilatus, is set to undergo a transformation. The current hotel, a blend of structures from different eras, will be renovated and consolidated into a harmonious, visually strik

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The city of Sion is planning for future growth by transforming predominantly industrial lands south of the historic center into a sustainable, mixed, and green ‘City of the 21st Century.’ The primary focus is the Ronquoz district, ideally located in

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   FORUM UZH is a new education and research campus in Zurich’s city center, providing space for almost 6,000 people to study, research, and work. The project, designed for a variety of uses, includes a large learning center and library, laboratories, a

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The sip main Campus is part of the BaseLink site, a global hub for innovative companies in life sciences, technologies, and research. The project offers flexibility and durability, catering to start-ups, scale-ups, and established companies in the bi

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The collaboration between the pharmaceutical company F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG and Herzog & de Meuron began in the 1990s. In the three decades since then, a series of buildings has been realized. A development plan devised in 2014 provides the urban gu

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   Basel’s Messeplatz district is home to the convention center (also by Herzog & de Meuron), life science industry, and the Badischer Bahnhof station. The Rosentalturm project aims to enhance local ties with residences, businesses, and green spaces, em

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The master plan proposed for Helvetia Group’s new campus provides space for all Basel-based Helvetia employees, who have been spread across different buildings in the city. The various buildings of the Basel headquarters have grown very heterogeneou

Itten + Brechbühl   Switzerland   With sustainability in mind, this timber building rose to be easily dismantled after ten years of use. The construction of Forum UZH, a Zurich training and research center designed by Herzog & de Meuron, required taking down four existing sports

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The renovation works at the Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel involves several spaces. The inauguration of all the new spaces is scheduled for the summer of 2025. First to be completed is ‘The Council,’ a smoking room with two fireplaces, one on ea

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The new University Children’s Hospital in Zürich-Lengg, Switzerland’s largest medical center for children and adolescents, comprises two buildings: a low-rise acute-care facility on the south plot, and a cylindrical construction for research and teac

Bearth & Deplazes   Switzerland   The project starts from a conflict of interests: the budget, very limited, was enough for a duplex house with a studio. However, the void in the village called for a larger building. The first step is to divide the program into ‘expensive’ and ‘chea

ELEMENTAL Nissen Wentzlaff Architekten   Switzerland   The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) held an invitation-only competition to renovate and expand its headquarters in Basel, replacing some ageing buildings. The scheme submitted by the Chilean practice of Alejandro Aravena, ELEMENTAL – in coll

Comamala Ismail   Switzerland   The Swiss studio led by Diego Comamala and Toufiq Ismail-Meyer designed this preschool in the small village of Ried-Brig, on the road that connects Switzerland’s Canton of Valais to Italy. The project is part of a plan to remodel the entrance to the

Renzo Piano Building Workshop   Switzerland   The organization that operates the world’s largest particle physics laboratory has opened a facility for scientific education and outreach, composed of several blocks pierced by a raised walkway.

Markus Schietsch Architekten   Switzerland   Stricter measures to maintain air quality and a decrease in the number of traditional burials led to the building of a new crematory, the design of which gives importance to the surrounding parkland. The facility is organized in concentric layers: fr

Christ & Gantenbein   Switzerland   Crossing a bridge is always an experience, but even more in Switzerland. From the Kappelbrücke in Lucerne with its paintings depicting events of the city’s history to the acrobatic Salginatobel built by Robert Maillart, the country is a fertile field

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Jacques Herzog   Early on, I had two great masters: an artist, Joseph Beuys, and an architect, Aldo Rossi. With them I began to lay the intellectual and formal foundations of my architecture. Rossi was in our time the best-known professor at the school, and he had pl

1932-2020 In the same Ticino canton of his birth to which he was ever bound, Luigi Snozzi fell prey to Covid-19 on 29 December. A master of contemporary Swiss architecture, Snozzi was born in Mendrisio in 1932 and attended ETH Zurich, after which he

After twelve years of planning and building, the office of David Chipperfield has completed the new Kunsthaus Zurich extension, the fourth in the history of the neo-Greek building raised in 1910 by Karl Moser, who would be the first CIAM president. U

Domus   Jacques Herzog   In this open letter addressed to David Chipperfield, Jacques Herzog reflects on the active role that architects ought to play in post-Covid society.

Norman Foster   Speaking before a gathering of mayors from 41 cities, Norman Foster shared his optimistic view of the pandemic as an uplifting opportunity.

With the scheme it drew up for the competition to extend the Kunstmuseum Basel, Christ & Gantenbein – set up in 1998 by Emanuel Christ (Basel, 1970) and Christoph Gantenbein (St. Gallen, 1971) – became known outside Switzerland, and it has since cons

One of the recurring motifs in the already very extensive oeuvre of the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels is the spiral. If for architects in past times the spiral was an expression of movement, for Ingels it is also something that has the capacity to g

For centuries architects were at the service of religious powers-that-be, and temples had priority over all other kinds of buildings. Maybe this explains why so many of today’s veterans are so eager to be commissioned to build churches and chapels. A

Herzog & de Meuron, celebrating a career

United in professional practice and friendship, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron together turn 70 this spring, and Basel, the birthplace of both, celebrates with them. Though the best of architects are not always prophets in their own land, these

Though trained at ETH Zurich during the years of Aldo Rossi’s chair, Valerio Olgiati (Cuera, 1958) has produced an oeuvre to a large extent removed from themes like type and context. Powerful in their schematism, monolithic in their materiality, exq

Students of the Master of Advanced Studies in Digital Fabrication and Architecture program at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich have built ‘Concrete Choreoraphy,’ an installation of columns made of special concrete with the assistanc

Tributes to artists tend to be post mortem. A case in point is Le Corbusier and his pavilion in Zurich, designed as a Maison de l’Homme in which to display the collection of the gallerist Heidi Weber, but which after opening in 1967, two years after

Le Corbusier, pavilion in Zurich.

Having both graduated from ETH Zurich, and after a training period that saw them working for Rem Koolhaas and residing in cities like Rotterdam, Los Angeles, and Seoul, the brothers Piet and Wim Eckert (born in 1968 and 1969, respectively) returned t

In the Swiss city of Lausanne, and in collaboration with the local firm Atelier Cube, the Barcelona-based practice of Esteve Bonell and Josep Maria Gil recently completed the new parliament of the Canton of Vaud. Reinterpreting the typical volumes an

Among young Spanish practices, the studio set up in Barcelona in 2004 by Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga is one of those that have most gone international, and the recently finished Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland, is the lar

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The author of ‘Design for the Real World’ is remembered with an exhibition in Gehry’s building for Vitra which stresses the continued critical relevance of his work.

On view through 10 March at the Vitra Museum in Weil am Rhein is ‘Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design,’ a retrospective on the Austrian designer and educator.

The Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, will through 10 March 2019 be hosting ‘Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design,’ the first major retrospective ever to be put together to honor the Austrian designer, educator, and activist who settle

Since its creation in 2007, the Swiss Architectural Award of the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio has made a niche for itself among the profession’s top prizes by biennially highlighting architects on the rise who have at least three major proj

Based in Palma de Mallorca, the young studio TEd’A arquitectes – headed by Jaume Mayol and Irene Pérez, recent recipient of the FAD Award for Interiors – has finished a school in the small Swiss locality of Orsonnens, fifty kilometers from Bern. The

The Seville-based firm of Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra is the winner of an international competition for the opportunity to restructure the central area of the Cornavin Railway Station in Geneva. The purpose of the project is to improve the station’s

Nicola Navone   Mendrisio  2010  
Silvana Editoriale   - 181 Pages 

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