So we went to Switzerland. And though the Sandersons have not yet been to Paris, Rome, Florence, Athens, Istanbul, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Marrakech or many other warmer or more renowned locales for European traveling, why on earth did we decide to Switzerland? Furthermore, why did we decide to focus our journey on Basel with only a brief stay in Zürich and without a second thought to Geneva, Lucerne or Bern? The two reasons are dirt cheap airfare direct from Alicante on Ryanair and the aforementioned architectural geekiness.
Basel is the past and present home of the starchitect superduo Herzog and de Meuron! My parents know about these guys because we went together to their additions and renovations of an old powerhouse: The Tate Modern in London. They are otherwise known for the upcoming ‘birdsnest’ stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the de Young museum in San Francisco and a global portfolio of landmark buildings. There are at least 20 buildings by them in the area, which is INTENSO. The unfortunate thing about these 20 or so buildings is that they are not all on the same street (which architects should consider as it would be way easier to visit them all) and because many of them are houses, train-depots and other non-public projects, one does not get the opportunity to gaze in awe at their interiors. That is AOK, because we still saw plenty, and these particular architects are known much more for their manipulation of skin then space. Which is to say that though many projects have plenty of spatial poetics to ponder, looking from the outside is often the best part. Definitely check out the curves on the SBB signal tower and see the Schaulager and St. Jakob’s Stadium showing their skin in my photos!
As you know from wifey’s posts, our adventure did not end at the banks of the Rhein. Crossing over to Germany (which also does not begin at the banks of the Rhein…kinda weird) on a Swiss bus is the city of Weil am Rhein and the Vitra chair factory. After a fire burned down their entire complex, Vitra translated their design ethos from chairs to buildings and created an all-star architectural theme park of sorts. To run down the name-dropping list of amazing Vitra contributors: Grimshaw, Siza, Gehry, Ando, Hadid, and recent acquisitions of work from Buckminster Fuller and Jean Prouve. Not to mention they are already constructing a large project by H&dM that will be finished in 2009. I have to say that the Vitra museum building by Gehry had a serious impact on my young architectural mind as a 1st year student, and the Le Corbusier exhibit was surprisingly spellbinding given my historical preference for Mies van der Rohe in architecture’s Ford vs. Chevy debate. (Sorry no interior photos…they are VERBOTEN and difficult to be sneaky with when using a giant DSLR.) The Ando building is a tiny concrete conference center tucked into the earth that anyone can rent out for meetings. I’ve been to his museum in Fort Worth, TX and was a bit disappointed (though no building has much of a chance across the street from the Kimbell Art Center). This, on the other hand, was one gorgeous project that really diverges from the ‘buildings as a collection of sculptures in the landscape’ theme of the Vitra Campus. I mean, they shipped a Bucky Dome and a Prouve gas station onto the site just to add to the collection. The big bragging right of Vitra, though, is to be the patron of the first REAL building (interiors, furniture and weird sculpture thingies with stairs DO NOT COUNT!) by Zaha Hadid. Zaha is an Iraqi born architect who practices from London and was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize (architecture’s Nobel prize). She was famous for over a decade without really building anything because she made AMAZING paintings as architectural drawings. Vitra put their money and patience on the line to have her build the campus’s fire station. The building made serious waves and kick started her actual architectural career which is shooting through the stratosphere as we speak. The crazy angular composition became a landmark deconstructivist work and a serious headache for its inhabitants. In less than a year the fireman were removed from their station; complaining of vertigo induced by the canting walls and an inability to run indoors due to the slight grade on all floors. It eventually housed the Vitra chair collection, but less than archival conditions (it was built as a fire station….not a museum) forced that collection into storage. Right now it waits for architecture geeks and Eames fanatics (the Eames exhibit was awesome!) to wander through.
I have seriously mixed feelings about Zaha Hadid, but still wanted to stop by her LandForm1 pavilion which is a few blocks from Vitra. As you have all heard, it was in a bus (not a streetcar) that we relied on the kindness of strangers and ended up at an even more amazing architectural playground: Novartis. I only knew of a few reasons why I wanted to get into Novartis, and I had not actually known that security was so tight before arriving with our four new friends. The secure entrance pavilion is an amazing building that is probably by an architect whose name I respect, but I have no idea who. It features a roof that looks like the wing of a jet that is supported by glass! I saw the glass mullions around the periphery, but it took me a while to realize there was no other structure. AMAZING! Inside, I was dying to see the building by Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA), and though Michael’s badge could not get the doors to open, I was not disappointed. This Japanese duo makes any ordinary minimalist look like Liberace, and their absolutely clean style has been making headlines with their recent Toledo Glass Museum. I seriously think that my ability to articulate the motives behind my admiration of SANAA got me the job that I have now, and I was super-stoked to get to see one of their works live. The courtyard in the center of the open-plan office building is GORGE! Our friends told us that the people who work in it hate it because there is way too much natural light and they think the courtyard is a waste of space. Seems a shame to me, but I was impressed. They have serious art and architecture EVERYWHERE though! The employees who drive to work (the parking lot is in France, but the campus is in Switzerland) are forced to enter through a giant and awe-inspiring Richard Serra sculpture, and I notice a Chillida chillin' on one of the many meandering paths through the campus. The Diener and Diener building has a fun multi-colored glass façade and a chunk of authentic, climate-controlled, imported South-American rainforest inside! Right now they are constructing a giant HR building by Gehry as well as new towers by Rafael Moneo, Tadao Ando, Eduardo Souta de Moura, David Chipperfield, Alavaro Siza, and many more (literally too many to remember). They had a row of construction samples for all of them with little plaques is front of each one describing the future building and significance of its architect! (BTW construction samples are done on large and important projects to test the façade…they usually consist of a 10’wide and few story tall chunk of wall, but these were each a 100-200 square foot mini-building with façade a some working laboratories!!!! My boss still doesn’t believe that they exist.) The cool thing about Novartis is that they are not using architecture as a public image tool, but clearly applying good design to the benefit of their employees and the work they do. It is so much more impressive to see these principles at work at Novartis then to go on a guided tour of facilities that only generate tourism.
By the time we hit Zürich, my architourism had slowed down. Partly due to a cold, partly due to the previous days of non-stop sightseeing, and partly due to the fact that Zürich does not have much architecture to offer, I do not have much to say about it. It was a gorgeous city that enchanted me no less than Basel, but wifey gives the better report on our adventures there. We did see a Calatrava train station, so now I’ve seen his work in BOTH of his home towns! (He’s from Valencia but studied and now practices in Zürich) The real highlight was the Freitag flagship store which was as cool as the ‘makes me wanna break the bank and buy it all’ merchandise inside. Recycled-train-car-chitecture is really hip right now and this building pulls it off in a real pure way. It really is just a few such crates stacked up with minimal interior additions. Some faces have been replaced by planes of glass, and one double-height space exists in the entry. The observation deck was super-cool, but since one can feel it sway in the wind, I had to go up it alone.
If you’re still awake and scrolling, congrats for finishing this mind-numbing lecture…er..uh..post. Just don’t complain about me not writing enough!
