SA

Founded by Swiss settlers in 1845, New Glarus in Wisconsin evolved from being a dairy farming and cheese production village to a popular tourist destination. Following a grave economic downturn in the 1960s and 1970s, the community discovered embracing the image of its cultural heritage, particularly traditional architectural details, as a way of survival. Consequently, they began to change their commercial building façades to appear even more Swiss. Since 1999, the town has even regulated the production of new buildings via its building codes to preserve this particular aesthetic evoking the familiar traditional Swiss chalet style. Swissness Applied investigates the transformation of European immigrant towns in the United States, exemplified by New Glarus. It features the results of extensive fieldwork on buildings in the village as well as design projections based on the local building code and evaluates the outcomes through different representation techniques. Expert authors including Courntey Coffman, Kurt Forster, Whitney Moon, Philip Ursprung, and Jesús Vassallo contribute essays that pick up on aspects such as the role of cultural imagery and immigration history in architecture, and on Swissness as a cultural concept in particular.

Winner of the DAM Architectural Book Award 2022.

Edited by Nicole McIntosh and Jonathan Louie

Foreword by  Marc Angélil and Cary Siress

Contributions by  Courtney Coffman, Kurt W. Forster, Jonathan Louie, Whitney Moon, Nicole McIntosh, Philip Ursprung, Jesús Vassallo

Interview with  Patrick Lambertz

Nicole McIntosh and Jonathan Louie are co-Founders of Architecture Office (www.architecureoffice.org), a Swiss American design and research practice based in Zurich. Currently they hold the 2023/24 Hyde Chair of Excellence. In teaching and practice their work examines how the dissemination of imagery produces new contexts that are composites of vernacular and imported architectural elements and styles. The work investigates broader effects of this phenomenon, acknowledges associated design challenges, and reveals characteristics that create other contexts. Their recent design investigations and writing examines the transference and fidelity of the Swiss image in the buildings of New Glarus, Wisconsin. A Swiss American village that constructs its architectural identity – built with materials from Swiss and American sources, some inherited, some acquired, some repressed. The initial investigations with this topic were made through teaching (Seminar at Syracuse University in 2017). The research and design work manifests itself in form of the traveling exhibition Swissness Applied. The project received the 2020 ACSA Design Faculty Award and an Interior Design Award (Honoree) in 2019. Their book Swissness Applied: Learning from New Glarus (published with Park Books 2021/22) was a winner of the 14th annual ‘DAM Architectural Book Award’ hosted by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum.

• Architecture Office