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

Miller & Maranta   Switzerland   When we speak of the Swiss Guard, what comes to mind are the Michelangelesque uniforms of the Vatican regiment, not so much the agonizing lion that Bertel Thorvaldsen designed to be sculpted in Lucerne to honor the Helvetian soldiers massacred defend

FRES Architectes   Switzerland   Working out of offices in Paris and Geneva, the firm headed by Laurent Gravier and Sara Martín Cámara, FRES Architects, won the 2009 competition for a theater in Geneva. The complex features two auditoriums plus drama production workshops. These were

Studio Muoto   Switzerland   The use of mirrored glass on the facades of the two buildings creates a unified image. The buildings are connected through the basement, a technical floor, and the garden – an enigmatic space covered with a thin layer of water to visually increase d

OOS Architekten   United Arab Emirates   Behind a mirror facade that has the effect of magnifying Switzerland’s national flag is. an immersive installation that transports the visitor to a sea of fog high up in the Alpine mountains...

Baserga Mozzetti Architects   Switzerland   The project proposes a conservative refurbishment, reducing structural interventions as much as possible. The main actions are: enlarging the museum’s elevator shaft, placing a retractable roof in the courtyard, and inserting an elevator in the cast

Elisa Valero   Switzerland   The proposal respects the historical value of the place and at the same time sets out to address the functional needs of a contemporary museum, paying special attention to the accessibility and organization of the different itineraries...

Christ & Gantenbein Baukuh   Switzerland   With a series of delicate interventions such as the insertion of new pavilion to optimize access points or a continuous ramp connecting various levels, the project seeks revitalizing the museum complex and removing barriers between the existing build

José María Sánchez García Krausbeck Santagostino Margarido   Switzerland   ‘Pivot’ is the motto that ties the proposal together, from the urban concept – the plaza becomes the new city center –, to the architectural concept – the tower will turn the two museums into one complex – or the refurbishment – the pavement unifies

Ilg Santer Architekten   Switzerland   The Zurich practice of Andreas Ilg and Marcel Santer won the 2010 competition to build the recently opened tower of Biozentrum, a center for molecular and biomedical research and education, This is phase one of a new campus for the University of Base

estudioHerreros   Switzerland   The proposal for a research center for the EPF Lausanne and the University of Freiburg understands that the building must construct the urban image of an institution that is open, multidisciplinary, inclusive, and transversal. The access canopy offer

Buchner Bründler Architekten   Switzerland   To strengthen the link between the old building – with minimal typological and structural interventions – and the new structure – built with rammed earth and simple openings – a tectonic division is introduced to extend the cornice of the concrete bu

Buchner Bründler Architekten   Switzerland   The new library building goes up at the center of the market square, characterizing the transitional space and adapting its facades to the environment. The hexagonal floor plan makes for free-flowing, spacious rooms...

Buchner Bründler Architekten   Switzerland   With the objective of fostering contact between student associations and business initiatives at ETH Zurich, the new building contains several multipurpose halls, flexible rooms, workshops, and spaces for inspiration, exchange, and creativity...

Buchner Bründler Architekten   Switzerland   The extension of the Aulage building generates a multifunctional complex with the capacity to adapt to the needs of future users; a light-filled entrance pavilion with a pitched roof acts as distributor towards the auditorium and library building...

Buchner Bründler Architekten   Switzerland   The urban scale, geometrical regularity of the structure, the linearity and proximity of the railway and bus lines are a few of the characteristics of the Altdorf station, which is going to be transformed into a New Railway Link through the Alps...

Buchner Bründler Architekten   Switzerland   Two entrances give access to the extension of the Accademia di architettura, surrounded by three historical buildings. The new structure pays tribute to the architectural topics of the place, such as repetitive elements and hierarchies, symmetries an

Buchner Bründler Architekten   Switzerland   Three triangular concrete towers emerge from the inclined roof of an old storage hall reconverted into a public exhibitions space. These pierce the hall and permit natural daylight to enter the new space, where a series of platforms are inserted...

Buchner Bründler Architekten   Switzerland   In the deep Onsernone Valley in Ticino, an ensemble of traditional stone constructions that were in a poor state of preservation, especially the main volume, have been refurbished. Because of damages in all the wooden structural elements, the consoli

Caruso St John Architects   Switzerland   On a site over a major traffic infrastructure, the facades of the exhibitions pavilion evoke the tunnels that run beneath the site and that, together with the change of material and the different textures, offer a strong urban image upon entering the

Caruso St John Architects   Switzerland   The project replaces an old building from the 1980s with another starting from a wood structure that is organized around a network of landscaped terraces. The facade composition contributes and adapts to its streetscape and surroundings...

Caruso St John Architects   Switzerland   The project to transform these old barracks in Zurich into two new schools offers an opportunity to give the monument, its open spaces, and its rooms a new use, and to see this major building in a different way: as if it were a house within a garden.

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