In Switzerland, „Urbanism“ means what you can see in a white 1:500 plaster model: how the proposed volume relates to the urban fabric, which spatial relationships the so-called „house“ entertains with the structure surrounding it, the so-called “city”. In competitions one is often required to show the outline of the proposed building in a situation plan, the built masses in black and the open spaces in white, producing a figure-ground diagram which allows for a graphic verification of the aforementioned relationship. This settles the matter of urbanism and one can proceed to the architectural object. Nobody knows what a city exactly is, and you certainly can’t build it like a house as the German term “Städtebau” suggests. The linguistic limitation brings us to another question, however: How can it be that the mainstream of Swiss architecture cold-shoulders some of the - at least from a political viewpoint - most exciting fields of our profession?

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