New Villas in Switzerland

Whether it is used individually or collectively, the simple dwelling house offers an extremely broad field for formal and constructional experimentation. In Switzerland, this is manifest in a development reaching from the typical chalet to the widely noted residential structures of the architectural avant-garde of the 1920s and ’30s – from Le Corbusier and Max Ernst Haefeli to Otto Salvisberg. The book "New Villas in Switzerland" shows that this development is still being carried on today with great inventiveness by contemporary architects. The seventeen selected single-family houses are distinguished by their pragmatism, constructional precision, and technical perfection, and also – this is the hypothesis put forward by Mercedes Daguerre in the introduction – by a typically Swiss combination of tradition and modernity. With structures by up and coming young firms like e2a eckert eckert as well as villas by established architects like Christian Kerez and Renato Salvi, "New Villas in Switzerland" illustrates the diversity of approach that is nonetheless made possible by the variety of natural and urban settings.