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0.

In a time out of joint, what is the most untimely question

that could be asked?

1.

In the 1990s, Peter Märkli built a museum for the

sculptures of his friend, the much older artist Hans
Josephsohn in the Ticino, the Italian speaking part of the
Swiss Alps. The site was not in the glamorous lakeside
towns of Lugano or Locarno, but in the village of Giornico,
in one of the narrow glacial valleys through which the
trans-continental highway runs that umbilically connects
northern and southern Europe. Compared to the resorts
on the lakes below, these valleys are grim. Spring comes
late, and autumn comes early. Along the valley floor,
villages, farm houses, and ancient stone churches
alternate with the vast mat-like buildings used by industry
and logistics.

La Congiunta is an unusual museum. It does not have

changing exhibitions, nor is there a budget for advertising.
Adam Jasper There is no reception, no wall labels, not even electric

Proportional
lights. The key is lent out at the local osteria, in exchange
for a signature in a guestbook. From the osteria, visitors
walk upstream, and then cross the river via a bridge,

Representation
continuing until they come to a windowless concrete
structure that appears, at first sight, somewhat like an
agricultural building, or one of the many light industrial
buildings that dot the landscape. The building is
asymmetrical, like a barn that has been added to over
generations. At the same time, there is a disconcerting
harmony to the proportions of the structure, one that can
be sensed more than it can be seen.

The entrance to La Congiunta is an unmarked steel door

with a single concrete step projecting from the building.
The thirty-five artworks inside are arranged in
chronological groups. In the antechamber, Josephsohn’s
earliest reliefs are mounted on blank walls. A perforation
leads to another hall with high reliefs from the 1970s,
where unidentifiable figures struggle like caryatids, as
Irina Davidovici put it, under the weight of the sky.1 The
third hall contains more reliefs as well as free-standing
busts, each one as large as a standing adult. To the side
are entrances to smaller rooms with smaller reliefs. None
of the reliefs show clearly identifiable figures, but the
scenes recall the Book of Genesis. There appear to be
figures embracing each other, or fighting each other: Cain
and Abel, or Jacob and Esau, the murderers and liars from
whom the world descends. These smaller rooms could be
described almost as side-chapels. In fact, the entire
interior fiercely recalls a church, but a church from an
alternate history of Europe. For the aesthetic is so pared
back as to be Calvinist, but the type is almost Byzantine.
The side chapels and format of the reliefs could not be
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Peter Märkli, Im Gut, Zürich, 2012. Photo: Jakob Frischknecht.

more Catholic, yet there is no clearly identifiable church is camouflaged by its local materials—it is from the
iconography. This is a kind of Sakralbau, but one so same stone as the neighboring peaks. Its grey merges into
specific to its location that no existing doctrine can the landscape, as if it had grown in place from its own
decrypt it. volition. The industrial buildings, in turn, are camouflaged
by ubiquity. Monoliths of naked functionalism, it is
Once a major landmark for pilgrims and traders crossing impossible to guess, in a glimpse from the motorway,
the alps, Giornico still has, at its center, the extraordinary whether they produce candy or bullets. La Congiunta’s
Benedictine church of San Nicolao; hewn from blocks of own apparent blankness is the result of an extreme
local granite, with its single nave flushed with light, its internal consistency. All the measurements, down to the
crypt, and its frescos. Josephsohn, a Jewish refugee from a thickness of the blank concrete walls, are expressable as
city whose name would be erased by war, repeatedly fractions of the interior height of the main hall: 6.8 meters.
visited these pilgrim’s churches in the Ticino. The human Every surface, no matter how raw, adheres to this single
energy captured in their roughly cut stone would influence set of proportions.
the tactile surface of his voluminous sculptures, made
with heaped and blade-cut plaster, and later cast in La Congiunta is so simple and so odd. It is a museum with
rough-skinned bronze. It is as much against these none of the apparatus of contemporary institutions. At one
Lombard churches as it is against the industrial buildings extreme interpretation, it’s a bunker for bronzes, the kind
that now hem in the village that La Congiunta should be of monument that might survive for centuries. Yet at the
interpreted. The church and industry seem diametrically same time, La Congiunta is also a manifesto on the
opposed, but they also share a strange muteness. The relationship between architecture and sculpture. It is as if
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Peter Märkli, La Congiunta, Giornico, 1992.

the eye is being guided with an almost endless patience, developments. The apartments cannot be sold for profit,
first to the reliefs— this is sculpture—and then back to the as they remain the property of the cooperative, which is
naked walls, the height of the room— this is architecture. collectively owned by its members. Rent is pooled, and any
surplus contributes to expansion, or for loans for the
formation of new Genossenschaften. The system is
robust, and so successful that without any great political
2. drama or controversy it has, since the end of the First
World War, managed to provide decent and affordable
The design of a monument provides a freedom from many housing to a broad swathe of the Swiss working class, and
practical and legal constraints. A monument, a building increasingly the middle class as well.
that is meant to mean, provides a particularly clear
example of how the language of architecture is spoken by Civic virtue aside, Genossenschaften in general must
its architect. La Congiunta thus allows insights into how conform to a tangle of building regulations, and also
Märkli tackles much more constrained problems, such as remain relatively cheap. Im Gut, completed in 2014, was
those in housing development. A complex housing project, the outcome of long negotiation with both the members of
like Im Gut, a seven-story housing co-operative in a quiet the existing Im Gut Genossenschaft and the geology of the
working-class neighborhood of Zurich. for example, is site. Due to the height of the water table, the foundations
subject to so many variables that architecture is far from had to be redesigned after the start of the project, forcing
being absolute. cost reductions elsewhere of around a fifth. The project is
a study in the resolution of these tensions.
The principles of Swiss housing cooperatives (
Genossenschaften) are fairly straightforward. The austerity program, in this instance, helped animate
Co-operatives benefit from subsidized land or loans, and the project. The façade, although made of generic
collectively build, own, and inhabit their own materials and built using standard techniques, is
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Peter Märkli, La Congiunta, Giornico, 1992.

modulated to create a play of shadows across the surface any theoretical statement could.
of the building. The bedrooms are deep rectangular
volumes that makes them feel both private within the The smallest details of the structure participate in this
apartment and also open to the landscape. But perhaps ethic of building. The walls are simply whitewashed, but
the most striking gesture is the placement of the kitchen the electrical sockets are placed with a numerologist’s
sink, in front of the windows with their postcard views solicitude for their proportional distance from both floor
toward the lake of Zürich. That one of the most luxurious and door frame. Likewise, in the raw concrete staircase,
views in the city is reserved for whoever washes the the grade of render is left intentionally rough (perhaps two
dishes says more about the politics of the building than grades rougher than is conventional for indoor use), but
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Peter Märkli, Im Gut, Zürich, 2012. Photo: Walter Mair.

the shadow gap between each concrete slab is so precise revolutionary classicism, austerity classicism, the
that in passing beneath it, both its weight and the care of classicism of self-determination, the classicism that
its positioning can be intuited. At the front door, looking appealed to Rousseau, and to the architects of the French
back, rough pilasters with amorphous blocky capitals revolutionary period; to Boullée and Ledoux. All classicism
stand like benign watchmen, guarding the entrance. This is utopian, but whether it is a revolutionary or reactionary
building is, quite intentionally, an anachronistic ideal of a utopia is radically ambiguous, and prone to rapid reversals
worker’s palace, a palazzin o dei lavoratori. of historical perspective: for some revolutionaries,
classicism enabled the invocation of the image of a
vanished, directly democratic world, set against the
inherited privilege and autocracy of the present day.
3.
The endless repetition of an image can lead to its
There is an aesthetic unity to Märkli’s body of work. Yet if debasing. Quoting a recognizable order, such as a
we were to go beyond just recognizing Märlki’s buildings Corinthian or Ionic detail, can easily collapse into a kind of
as “Märkli-like” and ascribe them a style, the answer kitsch. The act of quoting an ornament implies no
would be a kind of classicism. Classicism not in the sense commitment, or even the impossibility of commitment.
of the supine affirmation of the established political and How, then, can classicism be invoked without also trading
social order, but rather a radically different classicism: in images that have lost their currency? One possibility is
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Peter Märkli and Gody Kühnis, Haus Kühnis, Trübbach-Azmoos, 1982. Photo: Heinrich Helfenstein, Petr Šmidek.

to turn to that side of classicism which is not visible in any his architecture, humor understood not as the genre of
single element, but only in the relationship between comedy, but almost as a physiological or temperamental
elements. Märkli’s classicism is not manifested through condition on the part of architecture. On a formal level, the
ornament, but rather through the consistent application of classicism that Märkli proposes is a kind of hybrid
systems of proportion. Working to site-specific proportions between organic modernism, one that starts from the
means refusing to submit to the units of measure of inside out, and high classicism. It draws its physical
prefabricated elements: the standard height of panels or detailing from the mid-twentieth century. Märkli’s
doors. Imposing a system of proportion is therefore a task architecture can be read as an attempt to re-embody key
that must be performed before other questions of moments from modernist architecture; not through
construction are even raised. This is not necessarily more citation, but out of an earnest desire to understand their
expensive, but it throws the architect back upon the latent promise. The result has elements of parody, but of a
materials themselves. And these materials need not be peculiar, gentle kind that emerges through taking apart
rich. the modernist claims of efficiency, community, and
optimism as obligations that have not yet been fulfilled,
According to Colin Rowe, Corbusier used his facades as rather than as cynical deceit.
“the primary demonstrations of the virtues of a
mathematical discipline.”2 But unlike Corbusier, Märkli is The result, such as in Haus Kühnis, an early project of
capable of being funny. There are moments of humor in Märkli with Gody Kühnis from 1982, with its massive
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caryatid-like columns, can look almost postmodern. But made Switzerland rich. The wealth of the country owes
this is not postmodernism any more than the recitation of much to its political constitution, a constitution that makes
a spell is the same as “quoting” a spell. Rather, this a change slow, but also allows reform to be both thorough
completely new performance of a received text. It is no and binding. That the country’s constitution is so little
more a parody than one wedding ceremony is a parody of understood abroad is, in a global media landscape
another. Like all performances, it can fail, and even preoccupied by an obsession with the decline of
collapse into farce, but it is never a representation of democracy, rather striking. But it serves neither the
anything other than itself. If Märkli’s architecture is funny, interests of large pseudo-democracies to raise the
it is because it has funny bones, not because it makes example of genuine citizen government, nor does it serve
funny jokes. Switzerland’s interests to aggressively export a model that
offers the country so many comparative advantages.
Perhaps the Swiss are too polite to praise their own
political system in public, but I am not Swiss.
4.

The very existence of the Im Gut Genossenschaft, as well

as other large housing clients of Märkli’s, such as PWG, is 5.
a result of conscious political decisions that were made
possible because of the Swiss constitution. The Swiss do The structure of a democratic constitution might seem out
not only vote in parliamentary elections (although they do of place when thinking of architecture, or an architect.
this as well); they also vote directly on individual laws. A Certainly, Peter Märkli would not have gotten the
Swiss citizen living in the city of Zürich receives, once commissions that he received, nor been able to execute
every three months, a fat envelope containing three books them in the way that he has, if Switzerland was not a direct
of Volksabstimmungen or “people’s initiatives” that are democracy with an exceptional diversity of institutions
up for discussion. One book relates to the entire nation, representing different constituencies. But we can go
the other to the region (or canton), and the third to the beyond this claim. For although Märkli rarely, if ever,
local community. Each law is presented in the wording of makes direct political claims about his own work (and
the initiative, with statements by political parties both for such claims are, in the history of architecture, often
and against, as well as comments by the government with unreliable), the aesthetic and the political are, in his studio,
respect to any practical or legal difficulties regarding the two sides of the same coin, because the studio also does
proposal. In a typical referendum, a Swiss citizen can be political work. Not metaphorically political work, not
expected to vote on matters as broad as multinational advocacy, not even protest, but active, constructive,
trade agreements, and as local as the question of whether explicit political labor.
or not to renovate a high school at the end of the street.
This political labor does not take the form of a building, or
Unlike any country in the English-speaking world, even a masterplan. Rather, in 2017, Studio Märkli, together
Switzerland is an actual direct democracy. This enables with the landscape architect Rita Illien, set themselves the
both some reactionary decisions (such as when a group of task of reforming a building code, the architectural
tycoons got headlines for banning minarets that nobody equivalent of drafting a new constitution. The client was a
proposed to build), and some that seem, within the cluster of a few villages called Glarus Nord, a community
constraints of our own political machine, as impossibly of some 20,000 people. Märkli sought to reinvent the
idealistic. PWG, a foundation for the maintenance of Glarus Nord building code not in terms of zones, within
affordable living and working spaces in Zürich, was which a set of predetermined rules would prevail (e.g.
created by a city-wide referendum in 1985, in which voters minimal distances, maximal heights, floor ratios, allowed
opted to create an organization whose sole role would be materials, and so on) but in terms of a set of axioms or
to compete with private developers in developing principles by which the planning commission would
affordable housing. The foundation now presides over approve or reject developments. These principles would
nearly two thousand apartments that it rents to low and include keeping to building typologies that are already to
middle-income earners at about two-thirds of market rate. be found in the landscape, and the use of pitched roofs in
Most extraordinarily, the entire organization turns a the most traditional areas. Exceptions from any rule could
modest profit, which it then reinvests in making strategic be requested from the relevant commissions. The
purchases to maintain the diversity of neighborhoods that principles would be reinterpreted, and re-negotiated, every
would otherwise gentrify beyond recognition. time they were employed. As Märkli repeatedly told the
press, it was not his role to visualize the proper
Switzerland is by no means celebrated as a political ideal. appearance of the town, but rather to help lay down a
On the educated left, it has fewer friends than Cuba. constitution to ensure that a conversation about design
However, it’s worth recalling that the country’s direct would take place.3 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the friction
democratic system was well installed before the caused by such plans is not less, the smaller in scale that
sequential European disasters of the twentieth century one works. The attempt failed in the face of the resistance

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Peter Märkli, Im Gut, Zürich, 2012. Photo: Walter Mair.

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Näfels, a town in Glarus Nord, August 1955. Photo: Werner Friedli. Source: ETH Library.

of a handful of private landholders, who feared a reduction courtyard. He carries the air of a refugee from another era.
in the surface area of the land that they might build upon, Sitting on a battered plywood schoolchair, he smokes one
and who perhaps resented Märkli’s proposal that cars be cigarette after another under fluorescent lights. A bronze
parked off the street. relief by Josephsohn, who died in 2012, leans against the
wall. There is nothing that speaks of success or luxury,
The story would be banal, except that its very possibility other than the extreme luxury of refusal. There isn’t a
reads like something from a parallel universe. What computer in sight. Drawings are faxed to the nearby
actually happened here? A small community, dissatisfied production office. The cigarette packet itself has been
with the appearance of its streets, commissioned an wrapped in brown paper, because the branding on the box
architect to design it a new building code. The goal of the is visually irritating.
project was utopian, but its claim to relevance was by no
means universal. It was pragmatic and local, even He is difficult to interview. Not because he is inhospitable,
parochial—as parochial as a classical polis. but because, having taught for a long time, he tends to be
best at answering questions he has asked himself. These
questions are so fundamental they are themselves
privileges: What are the web of associations and
6. experiences that tie an architect to their chosen
profession? What are the political and material conditions
Twilight is reflected off the walls of the neighboring out of which architecture grows? What is the correct form
tenements. Peter Märkli sits in his studio, in a grimy, of a façade, one that fulfills its responsibilities to the
former light industrial building in a Hinterhof, a back people that live within it, those who visit it, and those that
courtyard of a residential block. Here there are no merely walk by it?
mountains to be seen, nor any kind of view beyond the
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Studio Märkli, Zürich, 2017. Photo: Katalin Deèr.

La Congiunta, Im Gut, and Glarus Nord are three projects for the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich,
that nominally fall with the normal range of a professional where he is also the editor of gta Files. He contributes
architecture practice. One is a “museum,” the other is a regularly to Cabinet and Artforum.
“housing project,” and the third is a “development plan.”
Yet La Congiunta is a museum that does not seek to
become an institution. It is, rather, simply a monument. Im
Gut is a housing project that ignores both utilitarianism Positions is an independent initiative of e-flux
and consumerism, in favor of an idea of a worker’s palace, Architecture.
a place of collective sovereignty. Glarus Nord is a
development plan that does not dictate exact rules or a
masterplan, but rather tries to create new methods for
negotiating how a village might look. In all three cases,
they differ so markedly from what is normally meant by
these terms that they can be understood as critical, even
radical. Not because they explicitly use the language of
critique, but because, in their seemingly self-explanatory
ingenuousness, they fly in the face of business as usual.

Adam Jasper is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute

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1
Irina Davidovici, Forms of Practice
(Zurich: gta verlag 2018), 146.

2
Colin Rowe, “Mathematics of the
Ideal Villa,” Architectural Review
(March 1947). Thanks to
Francesca Johanson for this
insight.

3
See, for instance, Rahel Marti,
“Weg mit W2!,” Hochparterre 1/2
(2017).

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