Stadt und Landschaft denken

Growing public interest in building activity could encourage the maintenance and preservation of a high-quality building culture and lead to the implementation of courageous, imaginative projects.

In 2016, the first volume was published and aimed to classify the negotiated content. Raum Zeit Kultur. Anthologie zur Baukultur was awarded as one of the Most Beautiful Swiss Books.

In this second volume, the articles are contextualized by means of a classifying essay and two interviews. More easily accessible than academic essays, they are intended to further advance and open up the discourse beyond newspaper articles. The volume discusses questions about the state of building culture and the future of planning as well as ways of overcoming the climate crisis and achieving the densification of historically valuable villages and districts.

A photo essay by the photographer Katalin Deér provides an independent examination of the building culture of Eastern Switzerland.

Authors of the articles (St. Galler Tagblatt): Marcel Bächtiger, Deborah Fehlmann, Susanne Koeberle, Tina Mott, Caspar Schärer, Rahel Schweizer Hartmann, Ruedi  Weidmann, Andrea Wiegelmann, Christoph Wieser;
Interviews, talks with Werner Binotto, Nina Cattaneo, Pascal Marx, Christina Schumacher, Christine Seidler, Bernhard Rothen and Astrid Staufer;
Introduction by Marko Sauer, photo essay by Katalin Deér.

Elias Baumgarten is editor-in-chief of the online journal Swiss Architects and Austrian Architects, and also works as a freelance architecture journalist for NZZ, among others. He studied architecture at the University of Innsbruck and worked as a research assistant at the Department of Theory and History of Architecture there. From 2015 to 2019 he was part of the editorial team of the architecture journal archithese. In addition to digitization, he is particularly interested in maintaining Swiss building culture and the work of young Swiss architects.

Architektur Forum Ostschweiz, a-f-o.ch