This past weekend was the ceremonial closing of the third edition of BIENNALE BREGAGLIA. For this year’s theme – Architecture and Gardens – 10 artists exhibited their works in the Swiss village of Bondo starting from the beginning of June.

We are particularly taken by the work of Swiss sculptor Piero Maspoli, with whom Ganz Landscape Architects has worked on several projects over the years. We congratulate Piero on his wonderful contribution to the exhibition, Granito, and are delighted that his work is being given as a gift to the Bregaglia municipality.     
 

The Zurich Succulent Plant Collection has been home to the one of the world’s largest and most important specialist collections of succulent plants since 1931 and is a national cultural asset.

As summer slowly but surely winds down, this unique collection is once again worth a visit. Visitors can embark on a tour of wonder and discovery of the vegetation of a tropical or subtropical rain forest. Especially the dry and arid deserts or semi-deserts are locations known to us as where most succulents grow.

Zurich Succulent Plant Collection
Mythenquai 88
8002 Zurich
Open daily from 9am–4:30pm, including weekends and public holidays

There are green, green/purple, and purple varieties of artichokes.  In Italy and Spain artichokes are grown over the winter half-year; after the blooms fade, the artichokes can be left in the ground to rest during the hot dry summer months. But in Brittany artichokes are grown in the summer time. With the mild maritime climate along the coastline, frost in winter is seldom and periods of heat in summer are rare, but there is always abundant sunshine. The Breton landscape, especially between Morlaix and Roscoff,  is characterised by fields of artichokes. The loess soil, containing windblown dust and silt, is extremely crumbly and the ideal nutrient medium for this delicous French summer vegetable.  

Lots of sunshine, long days, sticky air, dramatic skies, heavy thunderstorms and warm rain are reminiscent of subtropical feelings. Ganz landscape architects are once again celebrating this summer and enjoying a good break in the middle of the year.

We are taking a break from July 29 to August 9, 2024. We will be working with a reduced workforce during this time. From August 12, 2024, we will be back for you with our entire team.
 

Ganz Landscape Architects visit gardens in Winterthur! Laura Schwerzmann and Paul Junker show us their allotments and Matthias Krebs his Mediterranean-style private garden. We are impressed and inspired by the great passion that goes into these gardens. After enjoying a cooling aperitif in Laura's garden, we are treated to a meal by Paul in his garden, thoroughly enjoying dining together on this summer evening. Thank you very much!

Ganz Landscape Architects, on the team with Jonger Architekten, Denkstatt sàrl, and Dr. Deuring + Oehninger, have won the competition for the Riedthofareal.

For the further development of the  industrial area, the structure and rhythm of the existing storage building will be retained as the design principle. A composition of storage building, new residential buildings, and open spaces merge to form an atmospheric, integral whole. Open as well as covered outdoor spaces overlap each other and provide a breeding ground favouring the development and occurrence of future uses. A spacious park forms the new centre of the quarter.  

30 June 2024 is proclaimed for the first time “Public Spaces Day”, initiated by Archijeunes. Press releases, posters and a full-page advertisement on 30 June will make it clear that the issue of public spaces deserves our attention.

The closer we live together, the more important public spaces become. Public spaces belong to the public. How they are designed and used has to be part of a negotiation process of the population. For this to happen, the inhabitants must have an awareness of their public spaces. Public spaces are spaces for everybody. Public spaces cause encounters with the unexpected and recurring encounters with the familiar. Public spaces make us aware of who lives in our society and shows us our place in it in a very physical way. Public spaces must be accessible and open, or they cannot fulfil their function for a democratic society. Without these zones of shared presence there can be no democracy.
 

The Neue Zürcher Nachrichten reported on the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910 in London, bestowing high praise on the design of the Japanese gardens on display. Gustav Ammann (1885-1955) visited the exhibition, and at the same time Leberecht Migge (1881-1935) wrote in the magazine Die Gartenkunst about the Japanese and how they created miniature reproductions of their natural landscapes. Ammann was quick to recognize in the Japanese model a way to become liberated from the all too strong shackles of the formal garden and, with this, not only developed his own garden design but also influenced young professional colleagues of his day. In 1964 a group of Swiss landscape architects travelled to Japan, led by Walter Leder. Richard Arioli, Ernst Baumann, Georg Boesch, Ernst Cramer, Fred Eicher, Eugen Fritz, Wolf Hunziker, Hans Nussbaumer, Willi Neukomm, Franz Vogel, Traugott Vogel and Emil Willimann were all members of the tour.

The influence of Japanese garden design culminated in numerous gardens and parks designed in Switzerland in the 20th century. The impact of the Land of the Rising Sun is also apparent in the designs of the Zurich Horticultural Exhibition 1933, the National Exhibition 1939, G59 (1st Swiss Horticulture Exhibition) and Grün 80 (2nd second Swiss Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Exposition).

This beautifully designed and recommended exhibition at Architekturforum Zürich is based on the recently published Borrowed Sceneries: The Influence of Japanese Garden Art on Swiss Landscape Architecture by Rahel Hartmann Schweizer.

Borrowed Sceneries:
The Influence of Japanese Garden Art on Swiss Landscape Architecture
by Rahel Hartmann Schweizer, Verlag Birkhäuser
320 pages
Also available in German (Geleihene Szenarien)
28 × 24 cm, 250 colour illustrations, hard cover

Architekturforum Zürich
Zollstrasse 115, 8005 Zürich

Exhibition hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 12?6 p.m.
Thursday 2?8 p.m.
Saturday 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
 

Savouring, enjoying, is something wonderful that enriches your day. If you savour, you love life. We derive pleasure from all of our senses, and the senses are essential to our work as landscape architects. Dedication is also a beautiful thing. To do something with dedication means to get involved with something, to devote yourself unconditionally to a task. Immersing yourself in a task brings joy, creates satisfaction and enriches your day!

Daniel Ganz provides insight into his way of thinking and explains the value of the craft and the common ground of landscape architecture and the art of cooking. Enjoy a conversation between Daniel Ganz and organic grower and cook Rebecca Clopath, moderated by ethicist Jean-Daniel Strub.


Monday, 6 May 2024, 7:30 p.m.

Architektur Forum Ostschweiz
Davidstrasse 40, 9000 St.Gallen
 

Climate change is inevitably bringing changes to the vegetation. This means that warmth-loving plants are adapting to the mild winters and changing our usual vegetation. For us landscape architects, this opens up possibilities for creating plantings reminiscent of southern climes. Thus, in future in addition to figs (Ficus carica), kaki persimmons (Diospoyros kaki) and trifoliate orange (Poncirus trifoliata), also bay laurel (Laurus nobili), pomegranates (Punica granatum), strawberry trees (Arbutus unedo), Szechuan pepper shrubs (Zanthoxylum simulans) and others will grow. The Chinese windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) is another plant that lends Itself well to a southern-style landscape design. However, the Swiss Expert Committee for Biosafety recently declared it prohibited, even though north of the Alps, uncontrolled spread is still not a problem. Therefore, it is important for us landscape architects to question doctrines and to avoid dogmatic thinking.

A recently published interview with our colleagues Krebs and Herde in the 30 March 2024 issue of Das Magazin gets right to the heart of this matter!  

The winner of the architectural competition for the ‘Promulins’ housing estate in Samedan has been decided. We are pleased to report that the jury has chosen our project on the team of Stücheli Pestalozzi Schiratzki Architekten aus Zurich..

The Palü Project was developed based on the special features of the location. The urban housing estate concept deliberately links up with the existing settlement structure and takes up the theme of the edge of the settlement. The set of buildings creates a clear front and back and in this way creates differentiated qualities in the outdoor space. A large part of the parcel of land will remain as an open ‘meadow landscape’. An essential part of the identity of the project is the connection to the expanse of the valley floor. The extensively farmed meadow will only have a garden walled with dry stone. The entrance area between the existing multifamily houses and the new housing development will be interpreted as a brook landscape. Shrubs typical of the region and largely unpaved pathways and squares will characterize the new address.

On the green meadow and surrounded by orchards, we recently completed the scenic exterior grounds of the Hangenmoos residential buildings in Wädenswill/ZH.
Nut and fruit trees  surround the new residential buildings built by Hauenstein La Roche Schedler Architekten AG. The centrepiece of the new grounds is a kitchen garden. Materials such as sandstone sheets and roof tiles from the former barn on the property could be secured and repurposed as construction material. For us this is a successful example of how new things can be created in a resource-conserving way.
 

In conversation with Petra Blaisse, Helen Thomas and Olivier Lutjens presented the new book by Inside Outside at Teo Schifferli's studio in Zurich.

The retrospective in book form offers a kaleidoscopic overview of Inside Outside's work in the fields of interior architecture, exhibition design and landscape design over the course of more than three decades. The volume begins with a collection of concise thematic essays and presents detailed reports on projects from 1985 to the present day, accompanied by personal accounts from Petra Blaisse, partners Jana Crepon and Aura Luz Melis and members of her team.

Paperback with folded cover
18 x 27cm, 896 pages
ISBN 978-1-915743-34-3

The long-term project ‘The Garden’ of Tom Emerson’s studio/chair at ETH Zurich will be moved to a new location by the end of the year. Last semester, structural elements such as `The Gumno’ were dismantled, and the broken-up concrete was used to build a water table. In recent days, in a second phase, Christoph Gasser’s team of gardeners has dug up most of the plant material, replanted it, and created the basis for the next intervention by students next semester.

Unusually for this time of the year, a few days ago the planting work for the Schauenbergstrasse residential building project in Zurich could be completed. Taking great care not to compact or overstress the soil,  our landscape architect Sarah-Louise Dechow together with the two architects Anna Ludwig and Lina Schurk of the Zurich office of EMI Architects placed the plant material in the landscape. Gardeners from GGZ then planted the shrubs as well as perennials, grasses, and ferns, and even bulbs could be planted in the cold ground at the last minute before the soon-to-come start of sprintg.
 

For our work as landscape architects the atmospheric quality in design has great significance. For this reason, we often sharpen our eyes through the gaze of the camera and practice perception of the moment. We recently received a snapshot from the mountains of the West Indies in St. Andrew, Jamaica. Artist Andy Jefferson succeeded in taking an amazing photograph capturing the light, colours, and the moment.

Hazima Smajlovic initiated the pilot project `House for Five Women’ in her hometown Gradacac, in the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The project is supported by Engineers Without Borders Switzerland, a humanitarian and non-profit organization. The architectural studio TEN is responsible for the design and construction of the house in cooperation with artist Shirana Shabazi and Ganz Landscape Architects.  

Now, after seven years of project development including two years of construction time, the house has been completed and the residents have moved in. Thanks to the quiet and privacy, the residence provides the women a chance to regain a foothold and recover from their difficult life circumstances.