SWITZERLAND SKETCHBOOKMARK TERRA-SALOMÃO

2015 48-365 | Profs. Kai Gutschow

and Jeremy Ficca

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTIONDAVOS | SUMVITG CHBREGENZ ATCHUR | FLIMS | VALS CHZÜRICH | ETH CHLUZERN CHVITRA | WEIL AM RHEIN DEBASEL | BERN CHDORNACH | LAUFEN CHRONCHAMP FRHÉRÉMENCE CHLAUSANNE | EPFL CHLA TOURETTE FRFIRMINY FRLYON FRMORCOTE CHCOMO ITBRIAN & SAM | A TRIBUTE

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INTRODUCTION

It is difficult not to focus on the details in Switzerland, as hackneyed as that may sound.

Although, never having visited Switzerland or any of Europe outside of Iberia before, initially I was a bit more struck by the grand landscapes and sweeping vistas than details, whether architectural or otherwise. The majesty of the Swiss Alps, snowclad well into June, stops your pulse. Rail travel to and from the mountain range is as smooth as a BMW on a freshly-paved straightaway. The Helvetian villages are equal parts picturesque and respectable, ancient but not abandoned. Indeed, construction and maintenance work never stops, and you wonder how they find time for it all.

Switzerland’s neighbors are also blessed. The Austrian wildflower meadows invite frolicking despite busybodies’ huffing. The French — more liberal with their affections — won’t question seven grown young men washing down pot after pot of mussels in cream with beer and wine, but will smile teasingly and knowingly. If Liechtenstein is a joke, it’s a very rich one. Italy — even the little I saw of it — is better than how I always imagined it. Germany made my heart flutter in rain and shine. Quickly it becomes obvious that these tableaux are best preserved in yourself as cherished memories. Photographs, drawings, prose, verse, and all other media except the complex interaction between light, eye, and brain cannot capture the full spectrum of your emotion in such cases. At least not for me.

So, I decided to discover and analyze details. Of course, the goal was not to look at details for the sake of looking at details, but of fitting parts to wholes. The progression of my thinking was something like this: If I was going to begin understanding the landscape, I’d have to begin understanding the lifestyle, and if I was going to understand the life-style in part I was going to have to peruse the architecture, and if I was going to peruse the architecture I was going to have to figure out the ideas behind it, how it was built, and so on.

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This analysis was accomplished largely through the medium of freehand drawing, of architectural sketching: the complex interaction between light, eye, brain, and hand. This was our assignment, but that’s because it is the best way to explore and start to understand that which you do not understand. Consequently the sketches I drew were

usually efforts to get at things that at first puzzled me about a particular building or place. I looked at how things go together, how light and point-of-view alter perception of a façade, where birds like to fly into a building and why that

might be, how adjacent buildings speak to each other, whether people use a space as I would, and other issues.

We were asked to conceive of sketches as tools that instruct as much as they record. I tried to take this to heart, recording things that can’t be seen through a camera lens or the lenses of my eyes. Occassionally the gestalt image

of a building or landscape was striking enough that I had to try and understand it through drawing, and try my hand at recreating it on paper. In many cases — as at La Tourette Monastery in L’Arbresle, France — a central image spawned or

was comprised of hierarchies of details, in the sprit of Carlo Scarpa or, as I said, matching parts to wholes .

Each sketch is in part a record and in part instructive, and ultimately I find that they all serve as catalysts for cher-ished memories, even after only a few months since the real thing. They are no substitute for the dreamlike memories of the trip that I replay in my mind’s eye, but they can trigger them. For example, while looking back at sketches from

Peter Zumthor’s Saint Benedict Chapel is certainly useful in an architectural sense, when looking at them I cannot help but think of that glorious first day in Graubünden, the hay barns climbing up the Alps like goats, the chapel

ringed by cows, their bells clanging inside the sanctuary, the villagers leaving out herbal syrups for you to flavor the spring water with (as if it needs more flavor!), everything saturated and sensuous, my open-mouthed stare of amaze-

ment dumber than these silly words I’m trying to use to explain what I felt. And I’m not even talking about Morcote!

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None of this is to say I didn’t worry about quantifiable realities. I firmly believe architecture is a balance between the creative and the straightforward, the artistic and the technical — however you prefer to say it — and neither should be ignored. A lack of craft can totally stall the expression of a great concept, just as a very well-put-together box doesn’t guarantee much thinking went behind it.

Swiss architecture usually fulfills high technical standards, which is not always the case in the United States, but in many ways it also differs conceptually, even at a basic level. For example, in the United States, safety egress is usual-ly plopped down as a tower block or core. In Switzerland egress is often conceived of as a clear architectural element or object — as an exterior stair — which makes its function quite obvious. These stairs are well-crafted, really beautiful utilitarian objects, with railings and guards used as architectural opportunities. That is an idea I can shamelessly say I will apply to future projects, where appropriate. Also, the Swiss put metal sheeting roofs over their bike racks! With gutters that feed rainwater to pervious surfaces! Each slot in the bike rack is staggered up or down so that the bikes’ handlebars don’t tangle up! I’m not sure why I haven’t seen that in the United States; it just makes sense. These are but two examples of many of the details that to me suggest a larger understanding of the immense possibilities and human experiences that design and architecture can and should accommodate.

In that sense, then, my sketches are not only triggers for good memories or records of my personal working-through of how materials meet in a certain condition, but they are also repositories of greater architectural concepts or ideas that I had not witnessed before, and which can applied to design problems in novel ways. Sketching is not about copying a detail you like: it is about understanding why you like it and applying the idea of that “why” to your own work. As always, I strive to fit parts to wholes, and vice versa.

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The Switzerland study abroad trip was an excellent experience. The new places visited, new foods consumed, new people met, and new (and old!) architecture studied will continue to provide inspiration for a long, long time. It was

challenging and therefore rewarding to practice sketching skills and techniques. As exciting as the generative mania of studio is, sometimes I feel there is not enough quiet time to really think and craft through hand sketching, but such

opportunities were abundant in Switzerland.

I’m thankful for the opportunity I had to do all of this with some of my closest friends and colleagues, and wouldn’t trade it for anything. The nights in Basel when the raging Rhine seemed to calm and became a canvas for the impres-

sionistic bridges and city lights, the buildings forming a constellation city pivoting from a central point on the river, the duck newlyweds Helga and Olaf swimming their evening stroll, the green trams like clockwork in their patriotic

FC Basel attire, the whole city turned out to celebrate that same football club’s umpteenth Swiss championship victory, and a young group of friends’ labrador retrievers attracted to our cheap German hot dogs and beer will always be especially dear to me. Hopefully someday I’ll make it back to many of the places we visited, and to the few we had

to leave behind.

A few words about the organization of this booklet: In general, the sketches that follow are grouped by building and location, with locations listed more or less in the chronological order in which we visited them. In some cases I

explain the sketches at length so as to link some of the ideas from the sketches and buildings to some of the ideas I talked about here in the introduction, and vice versa. Other times I try and let the drawings speak for themselves.

Hope you enjoy!

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DAVOS | SUMVITG CH

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7

KIRC

HNER

MUS

EUM

| DAV

OS, S

WITZ

ERLA

ND |

GIG

ON &

GUY

ER |

1992

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ST. BENEDICT CHAPEL | SUMVITG, SWITZERLAND | PETER ZUMTHOR | 1988

The Saint Benedict Chapel exemplifies many of the qualities that I subsequently sought out in other places we visited and tried to represent in my sketches. It strives to be a complete work, where the form is ap-propriate from a practical standpoint — the teardrop shape is meant to dissipate the force of avalanches, and from a conceptual standpoint — the chapel references Christian metaphors having to do with ships, eggs, and creation.

The pure constructive quality of the details is obvious, but they also reinforce the idea of what a chapel should be, as the ribs that form a protective sanctuary and raise a sacred platform above the profane ground.

Landscape is a key consideration here as well. It is chal-lenging to reconcile respect for the immense natural beauty of the village with the need for the chapel to stand out as an important public building, but Zumthor seems to have succeeded. This synthesis of the practi-cal and the artistic and of matching parts to wholes was something I looked for in other buildings.

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BREGENZ AT

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KUNS

THAU

S BR

EGEN

Z | B

REGE

NZ, A

USTR

IA |

PETE

R ZU

MTHO

R | 1

997

Zumthor’s Kunsthaus Bregenz, like the Saint Benedict Chapel, is a highly refined expression of the tenets of constructability and structure combined with the ideals of what a building — in this case a museum — should be. To me, though, the Kunsthaus is more distinctly dualistic in this regard than the chapel.

What I mean is that the structure is pushed to the outside, the tense steel cables and columns holding up a rainscreen façade that still reveals the scaffolding, so to speak, behind it.

In the interior, however, very little of that is evi-dent. The steel skeleton is more or less structurally separate from the pristine concrete floorplates, and the shear walls holding up the floorplates as well as the floorplates themselves become creamy tabulae rasae for the exhibited artwork, and hardly read as concrete at all. Even the glass façade is forgotten, with most of the light being controlled artificial lighting, an almost eerie idealization that guarantees the art is exhibited properly.

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CHUR | FLIMS | VALS CH

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THERME VALS | VALS, SWITZERLAND | PETER ZUMTHOR | 1996 HOLY CROSS CHURCH | CHUR, SWITZERLAND | WALTER FÖRDERER | 1969

YELLOW HOUSE | FLIMS, SWITZERLAND | VALERIO OLGIATI | 1995 15

ZÜRICH | ETH CH

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VARI

OUS

PROJ

ECTS

| ET

H ZÜ

RICH

, SW

ITZER

LAND

| GR

AMAZ

IO &

KOH

LER

et al

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LEUTSCHENBACH SCHOOL | ZÜRICH, SWITZERLAND | CHRISTIAN KEREZ | 2009

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LUZERN CH

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KKL L

UZER

N | L

UZER

N, SW

ITZER

LAND

| JEA

N NO

UVEL

| 19

98

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The Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern (KKL; Culture and Congress Center Luzern) provided a wealth of details for me to study. The so-called “hand of the architect” appeared evident in every-thing, from the overall shape and planning of the building to the many guardrails.

It is fair to say this density of detail is the case with someone like Zumthor as well, but the justification for such details seems different in the KKL. I see a certain sumptuousness to it all, as if Nouvel is trying to pull out all the stops and create the mod-ern equivalent of Paris’s Opéra Garnier in Luzern. In other words, Nouvel is not afraid of ornament, though he seems to try and couch it in terms of occupant usability, as is the case with elements as small as the divets in the auditorium writing desks and as large as the patterned acoustic panels in the main auditorium.

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VITRA | WEIL AM RHEIN DE

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VITR

A CA

MPUS

| WEIL

AM

RHEIN

, GER

MANY

| VA

RIOU

S DE

SIGN

ERS

| 198

1 – P

RESE

NT

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My observations at Vitra’s production facilities were, like their manufacturing processes, as focused on the details as possible. I was partic-ularly intringued by how Eames executive chair production is categorized into seven steps that address all possible customer choices and variations. It seems like this way of working might be applied to notions of prefabrication and mass customization in architecture and construction.

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BASEL | BERN CH

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TINGU

ELY

MUSE

UM |

BASE

L, SW

ITZER

LAND

| MA

RIO

BOTT

A | 1

996

As you probably figured from the introduction, I fell in love with Basel. The Rhine raged all day and night. It appeared to discharge the entire snow-melt of the Alps.

Basel owes its architectural beauty to the Rhine as well, I would say. The river turns the city’s old bridges and boathouses into reflective composi-tions rivaling the world’s best artists, especially at night. More contemporary architecture is also in dialogue with the Rhine, such as the Tinguely Museum.

The museum is sited along the river. Its elliptical trusses are reminiscent of the nearby arched bridges. The Rhine as well as a busy bike and pedestrian path flow near and under the muse-um’s entrance. The peculiar glass-and-concrete exhibition room separated out from the rest of the building seems to underscore these flows. Its form mimics the old boathouses and ferries. Even Jean Tinguely’s kinetic fountain sculptures reinforce the primacy of the riparian site and city.

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ZENTRUM PAUL KLEE | BERN, SWITZERLAND | RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP | 2005

At first glance the Zentrum Paul Klee doesn’t seem like Renzo Piano’s other works, which are usually high-tech rectangles. Underneath the undulating green roofs of the museum, however, Renzo’s impeccable planning and detailing skills are on display alongside Klee’s paintings and prints.

The integration of sytems such as lighting, sun-shading, and display surfaces with the structure and plan of the building are damn near perfect, in the sense that everything hangs from the previous system in a clear hierarchy. The motif of hang-ing is evident throughout, as in many of Piano’s buildings.

The question is whether things are truly hanging, or if they are held up by other means, as is the case in RPBW’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Muse-um addition in Boston and some of their other works (at the Gardner, balconies appear to hang but are actually tied back to supporting walls).

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DORNACH | LAUFEN CH

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GOET

HEAN

UM |

DORN

ACH,

SWITZ

ERLA

ND |

RUDO

LF S

TEIN

ER |

1919

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RICOLA WAREHOUSE | LAUFEN, SWITZERLAND | HERZOG & deMEURON | 1987

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RONCHAMP FR

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NOTR

E DA

ME D

U H

AUT

| RON

CHAM

P, FRA

NCE

| LE

CORB

USIER

| 19

55

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HÉRÉMENCE CH

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ST. N

ICHO

LAS

CHUR

CH |

HÉRÉ

MENC

E, SW

ITZER

LAND

| WA

LTER

FÖRD

ERER

| 19

71

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Hérémence’s St. Nicholas Church is a masterwork. The effort necessary to design and build something like this in a time before digital representation and fabrication is hard to imagine. The complexity of the interior belies the structurally straightforward vernacular constructions of the rest of the village while paying homage to their craft. The details here are integrated into the structure. To me this seems a modern interpretation of the scholasticism of Gothic cathedrals (as explained by Erwin Panofsky), where every element of a church represents a necessary quality of the church or congregation, and seems appropriate to a building at the center of daily life.

The exterior spaces are quite well integrated with the nearby school and shops. While St. Nicholas is quite different visually from most of the buildings in Hérémence, the village’s quasi-terraced topography allows it to blend into the context. Every once in a while the cross will be framed by village buildings, just as the church itself has exterior “windows” that frame views of the village.

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LAUSANNE | EPFL CH

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EPFL ROLEX LEARNING CENTER | LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND | SANAA | 2010

The Rolex Learning Center is probably the most disorienting building I’ve ever been in, save the subbasements of Doherty Hall here at CMU. The building was filled with maps of itself and it was still hard to navigate.

As I tried to show in the sketch at left, it is obvious when you explore the entire building that there are nodes of activity. People tend to occupy the flatter areas, while the curved areas are almost completely abandoned, or occupied by one or two people taking a nap.

From an ethical standpoint — in terms of accessi-bility, organization, and economics — I can’t agree with making a building have curved floors at an angle at which most people, and especially people with limited mobility, can’t comfortably traverse those surfaces, thereby requiring a secondary ramp system that ruins the clarity of the curved floor idea in the first place. In the end, the users vote with their feet; no one occupies the curves.

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LA TOURETTE FR

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SAIN

TE M

ARIE

de LA

TOUR

ETTE

| L’A

RBRE

SLE,

FRAN

CE |

LE C

ORBU

SIER

| 19

60

50

51

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FIRMINY FR

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SAINT-PIERRE | FIRMINY, FRANCE | LE CORBUSIER & JOSÉ OUBRERIE | 1971 - 2006

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LYON FR

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MUSÉ

E de

s CO

NFLU

ENCE

S | L

YON,

FRAN

CE |

COOP

HIM

MELB

(L)AU

| 20

14

60

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MORCOTE CH

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MEDI

EVAL

URB

AN FA

BRIC

of M

ORCO

TE, S

WITZ

ERLA

NDIn Morcote I tried to capture the spirit of what it might be like if you were taking your mid-afternoon stroll through the town, perhaps as Guy Debord and the psychogeog-raphers did in Paris. As a result the map of thepaths I took was distorted by my perceptions,and is not necessarily representative of geometric reality.

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COMO IT

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CASA del FASCIO (CASA del POPOLO) | COMO, ITALY | GIUSEPPE TERRAGNI | 1936

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BRIAN & SAM | A TRIBUTE

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SWITZERLAND SKETCHBOOKMARK TERRA-SALOMÃO

2015