Swiss cities offer visitors a vast number of architectural highlights. Switzerland also boasts several world-renowned architects whose work is globally recognised as innovative, influential and daring. Basel-born and based Herzog and de Meuron is arguably Switzerland's most famous architectural firm. Its design of the Olympic stadium in Beijing won the inaugural Design of the Year for Architecture award from London's Design Museum and its design of London's Tate Modern art gallery gave the city a revamped iconic landmark.
Basel itself has a high concentration of architectural highlights. The city alone has 40 museums in only 40 sq km, and its architectural style has a unique modern style delightfully contrasted against its beautifully preserved old town. One particular highlight is the Herzog and de Meuron-designed Schaulager, a building somewhat hard to categorise. In part it's an art museum and exhibition space, but also a storage facility; it also houses the works of the Emmanuel Hoffmann Foundation.
The city is also home to the striking work of another world-renowned Swiss architect, Mario Botta, who has received international acclaim for the Kyobo tower in Seoul and the unique cube-shaped Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. In Basel, the Botta-designed Jean Tinguely Museum is set on the banks of the Rhine, and houses the huge mechanical sculptures of the avant garde Swiss artist. Botta has designed key buildings in many other Swiss cities, particularly Lugano. The Banca del Gottardo building and the Palazzo Ransila are both great examples of his striking style.
All this contrasts with Switzerland's striking medieval architecture. Fribourg's well-preserved medieval charm includes more than 200 gothic facades dating from the 15th century. Similarly, St Gallen's abbey district, with its baroque cathedral and former monastery and incredible Abbey library buildings, has been listed as a Unesco world heritage site. The town dates back to the year AD610, but St Gallen is also buzzing with contemporary architecture. Here, a previously mundane banking square has been transformed into the world's largest public living room. The Stadtlounge, designed by architect Carlos Martinez and artist Pipilotti Rist comes completely furnished, and is one of the most remarkable public spaces in Europe.
Le Corbusier
Swiss architect Charles Edouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, is widely acclaimed as the most influential architect of the 20th century. His radical but elegantly functional style reinvented modern living on a scale that remains influential today. His birthplace, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland's highest-altitude city, is home to some of his early masterpieces, which have become places of modern pilgrimage. The most famous is the Maison Blanche, the first house planned and built by Le Corbusier for his parents in 1912. Another is the Villa Turque, which features a sculpture designed by Le Corbusier and referencing his aim to give architecture a scale of mathematical proportions based on the human body.
London's Barbican is hosting a Le Corbusier exhibition, entitled The Art of Architecture (19 February to 24 May). It's the first major London review of this iconic architect's work in more than 20 years, presenting a wealth of his original architectural models, interior reconstructions, drawings, furniture, vintage photographs and films.
