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Swiss Roadtrippin
The second day and a half of the weekend we decided to spend photo hunting for some well known modern architects in Bern, Lucerne, and Sumvigt. There were only five of us, so it was easy to pick up and go, spending as much or as little time at one place as we wanted. We had some real issues with traffic and detours in Bern, so it took us a little longer to find the places we meant to see. Once we got it down, we stopped at Daniel Liebskin’s Westside Leisure Center (mall/pool/movie theatre).
It was pretty cool to see, but real sketchy to be taking pictures in. I couldn’t resist, but I can’t say I wasn’t on the lookout for Swiss-German Paul Blart Mall Cops. Gotta be sneaky if you’re gonna be sketchy. Anyways, it was an interesting building, and I didn’t mind the stuff people sometimes criticize about Liebskin. He tends to make buildings a little too sculptural and symbolic - to the point where there’s dead space nobody can appreciate. Or he’ll design fixtures or structural supports that seem arbitrarily decided rather than seamlessly integrated.
I’ve come to find it might not be so bad to appear that way. It’s made him famous, and to be honest I don’t think many of the people shopping care, as long as it’s accessible, it’s got what they need, and it’s cool looking. There’s more I don’t know, but for my first impressions, props Danny boy.
We drove to see Renzo Piano’s museum for Paul Klee before we left for Lucerne. Paul Klee was heavily influential in the development of modern ideas in art and architecture. His sketches are what most of us aspire to, and his art exemplifies the type of multimedia expression we’re encouraged to present our work with. Pretty cool stuff. The building wasn’t so bad either.
A couple things turned me off about it, but I can’t deny the respectful relationship Piano developed with the ground. The way the wavy roof swoops down to it to split up the program, and then merges with the grass on the periphery is really pretty, and is made possible by well-drawn details. The problem was the details weren’t well-realized when the outside met the inside. It’s a little nit-picky after my judgment of Liebskin, but the aluminum wrapped around the curved steel inside looked a little gnarly up close, and not up to par with the quality of everything else. Maybe it was because of the treatment of Klee’s exhibit that I was looking extra hard for problems, but I think that detail had some noticeably poor craftsmanship. It was interesting that Piano decided to put his own exhibit about the building we were standing in under the curvy roof, and shove it’s namesake’s work underground in a bland exhibit space. Dick move, Renzo. Overall though, I must say it was a pretty sweet scheme.
We jumped ship from there, hit up Lucerne for the night, and awoke to find the Culture and Congress Center, designed by Jean Nouvel. Our professor told us about the roof in class, but the real deal is somethin else. It looks paper-thin and sharp as a knife, hanging over the building an extra 20 feet.
We were on a tight schedule, so we only spent money to check out the high terrace, then we were off to Sumvigt. The drive there was like the Gimmelwald hike on roids. At some points you couldn’t see the car 10 ft from your bumper, on a snowy foggy dreamroad. Other legs of the trip were flooded with the colors of fall, rising up to the snow-sprinkled evergreens and cloudy snowcaps. It was the kind of stuff you only see on the blown-up pictures of road maps and travel magazines.
Check flickr if you wan’t your mind blown. I got to check out the chapel in Sumvigt twice, and the second time around the sky was blue!
Peter Zumthor designed the chapel in the shape of an aspen leaf, as a replacement for the one destroyed in an avalanche years ago. Kinda fits better to call it a teardrop.
It seemed like an affordable, site-appropriate, modern building that local builders could handle with relative ease.
It was nice to see work from such a famous architect that made me think I could do something like that.
Hopefully I can, someday.
