40. Switzerland, meet the architects (2012)

This was certainly a difficult piece to think about as to depict. I lived in Zurich in 2012 and my experience of Switzerland was deep and meaningful, I had it all, love, work…and architecture. It is impossible to find a synthesises of Swiss landscape without incurring into a collage of buildings like the one here depicted, alternatively you could simply depict yet another profile of Matterhorn or Mont Blanc and I would always gravitate towards some understated yet, poignant buildings. All radiate from my red box right in the middle of the painting. After all, the Swiss love the cubes and squares... the Swiss flag is actually a square, and certainly not at a rectangle like in most other national flags in the world. In Switzerland it seems that the closer you get to a cube, the more brownie points you get, the closer you are to the external world, the better their interior charm, and I am not talking about the banks in Zurich but all building typologies in la Confederazione Helvética (CH). As my old teacher used to say, "jovenes, no le tengan miedo al cubo", do not be afraid of the cube, who at the time learned from Mario Botta, architetto Ticinesse. Building and that is what the Swiss architects have done brilliantly, they have experimented with the cube in all sort of possibilities. Perhaps as a reaction to the spiky alpine landscape, perhaps as a certain tiredness to medieval chalets, with heap or cathedral roofs, perhaps as a inherited value of seclusion from their Calvinist past, perhaps (and most likely) all of the above.

From top right, clockwise, Vitra furniture factory near Basel, Herzog & De Meuron’s exhibition rooms at the Vitra Factory near Basel,  La Casa Cubo de Mario Botta near Lugano,  Santiago Claltrava’s biblioteca de la facultad de derecho de la Universidad de Zurich, Peter Zumthor’s thermal baths in Vals where each chamber changes colour according to the temperature of its pool.

Guillermo Aranda-Mena Ⓒ2023