City, Country, Mountain

Perhaps nowhere else in the world do engineering, craftsmanship, materiality, and landscape converge as seamlessly as in Switzerland. Over the past two decades, a global center of contemporary architecture has developed here. Peter Zumthor and Herzog & de Meuron have realized a whole series of buildings both in Switzerland and abroad, paving the way for a younger generation of architects to pursue new forms of architectural expression: deeply rooted in traditional Swiss building methods and materials on the one hand, yet utilizing innovative construction methods and high-tech tools on the other.

The overview documents the most important buildings of the last ten years, going a step beyond typical project-based architectural collections. Stunning architectural photographs highlight the details, volume, and experimental materials of the buildings, portraying them in the unique environment in which they were designed and constructed. It is precisely this unity of technology, materials, and the natural landscape that makes this architecture so special. Due to their isolated location, few of the buildings are known, even though they were designed by some of the world's most admired architects.