werk, bauen + wohnen 7/8 – 2017
This is the moment that we wish to record in this issue, as today many important Swiss positions would be inconceivable without the experience gained abroad or the process of cross-border exchange. Given the reputation of Swiss architecture in the world, its numerous international connections and its considerable potential for learning, it may seem astonishing that Swiss offices tend rarely to take part in international competitions or to build abroad. It seems almost as if, in terms of architecture, the Swiss foreign trade balance were somewhat one-sided: those who build elsewhere must adapt to unfamiliar conditions, laws, cultures of building and handcraft and financial constraints and this seems to deter many from getting involved in building abroad.
Many young architects from throughout the world study and work in Switzerland and innumerable study trips are made to this country. But in fact one cannot talk of a Swiss architecture. And architecture here can certainly not lay claim to something that is specifically its own, unless one were to describe the small-scale structure of the branch and of the construction companies as typically Swiss. Sometimes, but rarely enough, the kind of credibility that paves the way to an international career can develop in a regional context.
There are familiar examples of this from Ticino, Grisons, Basel, and more recently perhaps also from Zurich. But this local quality is determined to much the same extent by what is different and foreign as by those things that are specifically its own. L’ Architecture suisse n’existe pas: Swiss architecture is European architecture is world architecture.