The monograph focuses on the projects recently executed by the engineering studio Conzett Bronzini Gartmann in conjunction with Switzerland's top architects.
The aim of the publication is to explore the cultural conditions and ways of thinking which have resulted in some extremely fine architectural, executive and structural achievements. The analysis of the most important projects of the Conzett Bronzini Gartmann studio constitutes an opportunity to appreciate the unusual rapport that has been established in Switzerland between thinking on form and structural considerations. The introduction emphasizes the disciplinary aspects and questions that make the studio’s work so interesting: the architectural and structural quality of the projects; the many different languages, contexts and scales involved, providing a broad overview of architectural output in Switzerland today; the different levels of collaboration, involving three generations of architects – the most senior generation, including Peter Zumthor, the middle generation, with Valerio Olgiati, and the new generation of emerging young architects – and, finally, the rapport between the local context (the studio is situated in Chur and has a strong presence in the canton of Grisons) and the studio’s dealings on a national scale. The projects are introduced in an article written by the architect with whom the studio has worked from time to time, in which the description of form and structural principles intertwine. Technical drawings executed specially for the book provide a graphic view of the static and construction principles that lie behind each project in an attempt to define an area half-way between representation of form and structural schematization. Two interviews with Peter Zumthor and Jürg Conzett, complete the volume.