Swiss Architecture Research Articles

René Furer’s Semantic and Syntactic Analysis: Venturi and Vignola at ETH Zurich

This paper explores the response of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zurich) to the student unrest of 1968. Specifically, it analyses the teaching of Swiss architect and educator René Furer on architectural theory. One of the key examples is Furer’s lecture on mannerism, in which both sixteenth-century and contemporary projects were used to illustrate “semantic” and “syntactic” dimensions of architecture. The terminology and pluralist content of the lecture show how mannerism was related to the notion of architecture as language and to nascent postmodernism. By highlighting this episode, the paper challenges the prevailing narrative of Swiss architecture as a bastion of modernism, suggesting that teaching at ETH was more in tune with international developments than previously thought.

The art of structural relation: Kazuo Shinohara’s “strong structures” design thinking

ABSTRACT With increased interest in materials and construction in the architectural field, the use of building structure as the element of architectural expression has gained interest in recent years. In his analysis of contemporary Swiss architecture, Arthur Rüegg has coined the notion of “Strong Structures” for the tendency to activate a load-bearing structure for spatial and conceptual expression. The article applies this notion to the works of renowned Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara, who has influenced many prominent Swiss figures in the debate over “Strong Structures.” By conducting phenomenological research on his experimental practices in House in White, Tanikawa House, and House in Uehara, the article examines how Shinohara used the organisation of structural elements and relations to express the architectural and cultural context. Finally, by contrasting the structural design methods used in Switzerland and Japan, this article aims to introduce a relational structure design mindset in order to complement and extend the concept of “Strong Structures”, which can enrich structural design by focusing on the art of structural relations.

Alpine heritage in Swiss publications

Switzerland boasts a wide production of publications dedicated to its architectural heritage that offer an articulated overview of Swiss architecture from the so-called bourgeois to the rural one. Starting from the monumental study by the philologist Jakob Hunziker (1827-1901) on the Swiss house in its landscape and historical development, two series of books have been written, namely Die Bauernhäuser der Schweiz and Das Bürgerhaus in der Schweiz. The peculiarity of these two series is their method and completeness, the result, among other things, of a careful cultural policy capable of finding and organizing the necessary means. In this context, there are some publications with substantially different approaches to those mentioned above. The fundamental difference lies in the fact that the analyses and descriptions are not limited to the single artefacts but investigate their ways of aggregation, relating the building typology with urban morphology. This is one of the characteristics of La costruzione del territorio nel Canton Ticino by Aldo Rossi, Eraldo Consolascio, and Max Bosshard, published in 1979 by the Fondazione Ticino Nostro. In this publication, there is no solution of continuity between the vernacular buildings and the more “noble” ones, often rather ancient and the result of an extraordinary ability to include and combine elements. The example of La costruzione del territorio was followed by other publications that share its same methods and objectives. Among these, two volumes dated 1983 should be noted; they are dedicated to the villages of Avers and Soglio respectively and both were created by the Department of Architecture of the Technical School of Muttenz. In these publications, renouncing the separation between vernacular buildings and bourgeois houses leads to a more accurate reading of the real size of the settlements, as opposed to the idyllic image of the mountain village consisting exclusively of rural artefacts.

Lack of Pregraduate Teaching on the Associations between the Built Environment, Physical Activity and Health in Swiss Architecture and Urban Design Degree Programs.

Background: Lack of physical activity (PA) is the fourth risk factor for all-cause mortality. Regular PA reduces noncommunicable disease (NCD) and mortality risk. The built environment (BE) is a determinant of spontaneous daily PA. Professionals who plan and build the BE therefore affect public health. We tested the hypothesis of a lack of formal pregraduate training about associations between the BE, PA and health in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design academic degree programs (DPs) in Switzerland. Methods: We reached out to all DPs in Switzerland to ask if and how these associations are taught. For those declaring to teach the topic, the program syllabus and course material were inspected. Results and discussion: For 30 out of 33 identified programs, information for the analysis was obtained. A total of 18 declared teaching the BE, PA and health associations, but this could be confirmed for only 5 after verifying the course content. Teaching principles of building PA-promoting BE represents an underutilized potential for public health promotion. Conclusions: There is a need to introduce formal learning objectives in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design DPs in Switzerland on the associations between BE, PA and health. It is likely that similar needs exist in other countries.

Constructing ‘the School of the Ticino’: the historiography of a new Swiss architecture, 1975–1990

Architecture in Ticino, Switzerland’s southernmost, Italian-speaking canton, became the subject of fervent historiographic debates in the mid 1970s. With the exhibition ‘Tendenzen: Neuere Architektur im Tessin’, Northern Swiss critic Martin Steinmann placed recent architectural production in the theoretical framework of realism and autonomy. The exhibition and its catalogue attracted national and international attention, leading to the extensive coverage of Ticinese architecture in archithese, A+U, and L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. In 1978, Kenneth Frampton subsumed this built production under a nominal ‘Ticino School’; he later used it to illustrate the notion of critical regionalism as ‘an architecture of resistance’. This article argues that such theoretical framings gradually detached the architecture of Ticino from its local context, leading to the paradoxical divergence of its historiography from its history. The resulting historiography entwined four distinct narratives. Their analysis outlines the misalignment of theoretical readings and situated knowledge. Statements of local witnesses, such as those of historian Virgilio Gilardoni and architect Paolo Fumagalli, are newly integrated into the discourse as a corrective to the admittedly better known external projections. The historiography of the ‘new’ Ticinese architecture played a dual role. Not only did it frame a ‘myth’ for international consumption throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but it also constructed a methodological blueprint for Swiss architecture in the 1990s and beyond.

Quando il museo cresce. Note su due progetti di ampliamento di Christ & Gantenbein

I due annessi museali a Basilea e Zurigo dello studio svizzero Christ & Gantenbein, entrambi inaugurati nel 2016, offrono l’opportunità di riflettere sul concetto stesso di ampliamento. Non si tratta della mera logica incrementale di aggiungere spazi ad una preesistenza, bensì di accomodare le molteplici forme di espressione dell’arte contemporanea. Entrambi gli edifici, pur nel loro differente aspetto, programma e dimensione, interpretano questi mutamenti culturali sia nella loro struttura architettonica, sia nelle qualità degli spazi espositivi realizzati. Per chiarire tali affinità, il saggio si avvale di alcuni contributi dell’estetica analitica che indagano sullo statuto dell’opera d’arte e sulla sua performatività in relazione al visitatore.

Eyes that hear. The synesthetic representation of soundspace through architectural photography

This paper investigates the representation of sound phenomena in contemporary architectural photography. This aspect will be highlighted through a phenomenological analysis conducted on the photographs of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. Focusing our analysis on the aesthetic features of photographs, the aim of stimulating the audience sensorially and emotionally becomes evident. We usually only focus on visual aspects, neglecting the synesthetic effects generated on the observers. Starting from an analysis of the portrayed persons in terms of expressions, gestures, postures and corporeal directions, the goal is to highlight how they change in relation to the building's sound space, and, as a consequence how they are able to influence the perceiver outside the frame. The interpretation of these clues is based on Herman Schmitz's felt body theory and Gernot Bohme's New Aesthetics.

Review: Bengal Stream: The Vibrant Architecture Scene of Bangladesh

Bengal Stream: The Vibrant Architecture Scene of Bangladesh S AM Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel 2 December 2017–24 June 2018 Bengal Stream: The Vibrant Architecture Scene of Bangladesh was an exhibition about dichotomies: coexisting dichotomies, dichotomies in dialogue. The tensions between modernity and tradition, lightness and gravity, silence and chaos, urban and rural, resisting and floating are just some of the productive oppositions that define recent developments in Bangladeshi architecture. Curated by Niklaus Graber, Andreas Ruby, and Viviane Ehrensberger and produced by the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum in cooperation with the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements, the exhibition brought together more than sixty projects by established and emerging architects in Bangladesh. Two premises are fundamental to understanding Bangladesh's architectural scene. The first, the geoclimatic, was briefly introduced in the exhibition's entrance panel. The second, the historical, was presented didactically in the first room. Bangladesh arose from an extreme territory, the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, a labyrinth of streams, creeks, ponds, marshes, and fertile soil. The monsoons—seasonal warm winds from the Bengal Bay—bring heavy rains that, when added to the Himalayan snow runoff, cause regular annual flooding. Bengali culture emerged in constant dialogue with these unavoidable natural conditions and their rhythms. The vibrant contemporary architectural scene of Bangladesh, presented in the main exhibition space, owes its timeless language to this dialogue and to the continuous interaction between tradition and modernity, which started with the work and thinking of Muzharul Islam (1923–2012), the intellectual father of a generation of Bangladeshi architects. After studying architecture in the United States and Britain, Islam returned to Bangladesh and started adapting international modernist principles to local culture, climate, and materials. The synthesis he effected required a deep and precise knowledge of little-studied …

Criteria for ‘Doctorateness’ in the Creative Fields: A Focus on Swiss Architecture

The thoughts about ‘doctorateness’ in the creative fields that are put forward in this essay take architectural design as their discursive setting. However, they may also apply to other disci - plines in the creative fields that deal with the design of concrete objects. The essay focuses on Switzerland with its particular architectural and educational conditions, but, again, the obser - vations could well be valid elsewhere as well. The core competence of the architect – to design – forms the conceptual framework for the proposal here for two different types of doctoral programs in architecture. One of them is an extrapolation of design education at Masters level, with the doctorate leading to highly advanced expertise in dealing with complex architectural design tasks, resulting in the creation of a kind of ‘super-master’ designer; the other establishes the qualifications for an ‘expert theorist’ in architectural design. Both of these types of doctoral work are strongly oriented towards the creation of design knowledge that has a ‘practice-oriented’ focus, in the sense of providing knowledge about designing as and objectively appraisable form of added value within architecture.

Forms of Practice: German Swiss Architecture 1980–2000 By Irina Davidovici, GTA Publishers, Zurich, 2012281pp., 151 illustrations, Price £38.00 (pb)

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Werner Max Moser’s New Altstetten Church 1936-1941

For George Everard Kidder Smith, the Protestant Church at Altstetten (a former Zurich suburb, integrated in 1934) was “unquestionably the finest Modern church in Switzerland, and possibly anywhere else”. In his famous anthology of Swiss architecture from 1950, he points out that it embodies on the one hand “almost all the church building philosophy which both the protestants and catholics have sought: one room of simplicity and dignity, binding the pulpit and the altar to the congregation in respectful unity”. On the other hand, he was interested in the fact that the church, built on the edge of a low hill, seeks a subtle relationship with an old village church that the congregation had outgrown. Instead of destroying it, Moser “carefully preserved and related it to the new by the angle and space relation between them and by the repetition of a mutual eave height.” With a few words, Kidder Smith succeeded in capturing the double interest that Moser’s building represents even today. As a matter of fact, the church center’s interiors are, as well as the exteriors, wonderfully calibrated, fragile compositions that fascinate us for their typically undogmatic combination of modern and conventional materials and (decorative) forms, but also for Moser’s informal but precise dealings with the architectural heritage. It is immediately understandable that renovating and extending this building complex was quite a challenge.

‘History is not the Past but Another Mightier Presence’: the founding of the institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich and its effects on Swiss Architecture

The Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) was founded in 1967 explicitly to facilitate exchange between the architects and the historians of architecture teaching in the Faculty of Architecture at Zurich's famous Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH). The founding members, Adolf Max Vogt, Paul Hofer, Bernhard Hoesli and others, encouraged a younger generation of architects to deepen and widen their knowledge of the history of architecture by working in the institute as research assistants and often writing doctoral dissertations. But it was very much due to the catalyst of the guest professor Aldo Rossi that the link between architecture and the history of architecture seriously influenced design strategy. Two of the many research collaborators at the gta who proved to be particularly important for their fellow students were Bruno Reichlin and Martin Steinmann. With the help of history they developed a ‘recherché patiente’ into the semiology of building and took this as a starting point for the design process, which influenced a whole generation of young architects to develop what became the new Swiss architecture so lauded today.

Complexities, Discrepancies and Ambiguities: Assessing the disciplinarity of Herzog & de Meuron’s architecture through Judd’s generic art

Focusing on the 2002 architecture exhibition ‘Herzog & de Meuron: Archaeology of the Mind’, the paper examines the disciplinary issues at stake for Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron when engaging with art praxis, using the work of Donald Judd as a theoretical framework for the discussion. The trans-disciplinary practices of both Herzog & de Meuron and Judd had and continue to have the ability to question the disciplinary limits of architecture and the arts, and indeed, the presence of the modernist arrangement of disciplines as a whole. The paper argues that, through assessing Judd’s theoretical and practical position on disciplinary distinctions within the arts after the minimal art debates of the 1960s, it might be possible to more clearly understand what sort of conditions may have been inherited in some way by the twenty-first century and Herzog & de Meuron’s claim to conducting trans-disciplinary practices.

Concrete Constructs: The Limits of Rationalism in Swiss Architecture

AbstractÁkos Moravánszky explains why for him ‘the traces of Mediterranean Rationalism in the new Swiss‐German architecture are like the imitation stitching on the moulded plastic dashboard of a new car’. It is an influence which, despite the undeniable impact of Aldo Rossi and the Ticino School at ETH Zurich in the 1970s, remains skin‐deep, sharing little with the present in terms of ideology or the interpretation of the historic past. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Jul bachmann and stanislaus von moos,Swiss Architecture;robert stern,American Architecture;udo kultermann,African Architecture;francisco bullrigh,Latin American Architecture, Braziller(New Directionsseries)

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Review: New Directions in Swiss Architecture by Jul Bachmann, Stanislaus von Moos

Review: New Directions in Swiss Architecture by Jul Bachmann, Stanislaus von Moos

Book Review: New Directions in American Architecture by ROBERT A. M. STERN. 1969 New Directions in Italian Architecture by VITTORIO GREGOTTI. 1969 New Directions in British Architecture by ROYSTON LANDAU. 1968 New Directions in German Architecture by GUNTHER FEUERSTEIN. 1969 New Directions in Japanese Architecture by ROBIN BoYD. 1968 New Directions in Swiss Architecture by JuL BACHMANN and STANISLAUS VON

Book Review: New Directions in American Architecture by ROBERT A. M. STERN. 1969 New Directions in Italian Architecture by VITTORIO GREGOTTI. 1969 New Directions in British Architecture by ROYSTON LANDAU. 1968 New Directions in German Architecture by GUNTHER FEUERSTEIN. 1969 New Directions in Japanese Architecture by ROBIN BoYD. 1968 New Directions in Swiss Architecture by JuL BACHMANN and STANISLAUS VON