TITLIS 3020 | HERZOG & DE MEURON
Titlis Mountain, Switzerland
Description provided by Herzog & de Meuron. Many mountains and glaciers in Switzerland, no matter how high or remote, offer panoramic views, cable car stations, Alpine huts, restaurants, and accommodations. It is taken for granted in Switzerland that practically every square inch of the country is accessible by car or train, by gondola or bicycle – anywhere and everywhere, in city and countryside. As a rule, however, our beautiful high-altitude outdoor locations have been fitted with purely functional buildings for the transport and catering of visitors. Rarely do they display any architectural ambitions, with the exception of hotels, for the most part of reasonable height, which was built in the days of an emerging tourist industry near the villages down in the valleys.
Our project on the Titlis belongs to a new generation of Alpine architecture that aims to do justice to the breathtaking landscape by ensuring a corresponding architectural experience of the kind now familiar to us in our cities. We are pleased that the client has commissioned us to carry out this project not simply because we can build something again but because it gives us the opportunity to present a concrete example of our long-standing, theoretical study of the territory of Switzerland. The Titlis project articulates an unstoppable process that is transforming Switzerland into a complex and differentiated overall urban landscape. The question is not whether or not we want this to happen but rather how well we are able to participate in this process and how skillfully we succeed in responding to the distinctiveness and diversity of our landscape. There is no city in Switzerland without landscape but neither is there any landscape without urban life.
