Pierre Yovanovitch   Switzerland   The young Victor Hugo who in 1832 was forbidden to stage Le roi s’amuse under the pretext of lèse-majesté could not have imagined that twenty years later, people would be singing his verses set to music on the streets of Venice, London, and even Hava

E2A   Switzerland   The left bank of Lake Zurich is characterized by a series of individual spatial compartments. The location of the water police at Mythenquai lies precisely on the perimeter of two such compartments: the promontory occupied by the Zurich Rowing Club a

E2A   Switzerland   In recent years, technological innovation has changed the relationship between living and working substantially: people work where they live and live where they work. This shift from a clear separation of living and working spaces to the most diverse

E2A   Switzerland   The industrial character that once shaped this area on the outskirts Zurich, and which is still partly visible today, is increasingly being overwritten by new residential buildings. One of these is this U-shaped apartment block with two well-differen

E2A   Switzerland   The existing school complex was constructed by Hans von Meyenburg from 1954 to 1956. It is dispersed across the site in a loosely staggered parallel configuration. The project strategy is based on an analysis of the existing buildings, which are unde

E2A   Switzerland   Elevated above the ground, the Center for Hearing and Language is accessed by means of a slender path that winds towards the ground level. The new school, surrounded by grand existing trees, replaces two massive provisional buildings. The L-shaped vo

E2A   Switzerland   The Hofacker school grounds, in the Hirslanden district of Zurich, consist of the school building with a gymnasium by Friedrich Wehrli, built in 1898, and a second gymnasium wing from 1938, by city architect Hermann Herter. These two existing school

E2A   Switzerland   Along the Gold Coast of Lake Zurich, individual localities have lost a clear sense of identity amongst the continuity of the suburban landscape. Generic architecture determines the immediate context of any remaining open spaces, which create a welcom

E2A   Switzerland   Europaallee is by far the largest real estate development in the heart of Zurich and lies just beyond the main train station. The site is the final of eight new constructions and is directly adjacent to the multicultural – and rather infamous – distr

E2A   Switzerland   In order to ensure growth in a competitive market while maintaining strategically crucial areas of research and development in Switzerland, Trafag relocated their headquarters to a 10,000-square meter industrial zone located in between Zurich’s Oberl

E2A   Switzerland   The brief called for two houses in one. Each house required independent access, yet the overall design had to enable inhabiting both houses as one residence. The complex, formed by four clean-cut boxes of monolithic white concrete resting on top of e

E2A   Switzerland   The Obstgarten school complex is a typical ensemble from the 1970s, and consists of raw concrete cubes that are integrated into their surroundings on different levels. While the brief included a renovation of the classroom tracts – their interiors re

E2A   Switzerland   This three-story apartment building shares grounds with an existing villa, designed by Rittmeyer and Furrer in the early 20th century. The general scheme of the proposal compresses the entire mass of the new construction into the south corner of the

Christ & Gantenbein   Switzerland   Reinforcing the connection between the museum and city, two new openings accessible via the arcaded sidewalk will be the primary change to the outer shell. The garden is to be doubled in size, while its interior courtyards and terrace will be updated

Christ & Gantenbein   Switzerland   To update the hospital complex to modern medical practice, the buildings will be attached to the existing by gardens, courtyards, and terraces. The modular floor plans in the two volumes of the first phase make future adjustments possible...

Christ & Gantenbein   Switzerland   The main facade of the medical facility takes on a representative role with a loggia that, from the street, differentiates the spaces destined for public use from the office and lab areas, distributed in the modular column-free floors of the rear vol

Christ & Gantenbein   Switzerland   The proposal replaces the concrete bridge from 1949 with a new stone bridge with five openings. The new design is more than a transport infrastructure: it connects the urban tissue and forms a public space at the entrance to the old town...

Sauerbruch Hutton   Switzerland   The Berlin firm Sauerbruch Hutton —Julia Knaak (project management)— was commissioned to build new headquarters for the international humanitarian medical organization MSF in the Morillon district of Geneva, Switzerland. Specialized teams from the fi

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   The stadium of Basel’s local football team, originally designed by Herzog & de Meuron and completed in 2002, will be renovated by the same Swiss firm. In the refurbishment project, photovoltaic panels replace the translucent bulging plastic eleme

Aires Mateus   Switzerland   The Pôle Museal, an urban regeneration plan that in scale and ambition has no precedent in Switzerland, mainly aims to transform the city of Lausanne into a world-class cultural-innovation hub and revive a degraded space next to the train tracks. Int

TEd’A arquitectes   Switzerland   The extension respects and complements the building of 1978, functioning as a single entity without giving up its autonomy. The new structure goes through the perimeter of the original building, creating a courtyard that connects both volumes...

HOK BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   Switzerland   The Raumfachwerk `proposal, where timber plays a central role, has won the bid to renovate Dock A and adjacent buildings at Zurich’s airport. The scheme drawn up by BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), HOK, 10:8, and Buro Happold carried the day over those sub

Isla architects   Switzerland   The Mallorca firm isla architects (Marta Colón de Carvajal & Juan Palencia de Sarriá) won the bid to build the Basel Pavilion in the inaugural edition of Architekturwoche Basel, held from 9 to 15 May. It is located in the old Dreispitz industrial are

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 

Mercedes Daguerre   Milan  2010  
Mondadori Electa   - 208 Pages 

Zurich  2010  
Niggli   - 120 Pages 

Jacques Herzog Pierre de Meuron Roger Diener Marcel Meili Christian Schmid   Basel  2005  
Birkhäuser  

Steven Spier Martin Tschanz   Nueva arquitectura suiza