The content of the film is only available in German, French and Italian. The Gotthard has been the site of several major tunnel projects: the construction of the Gotthard railway tunnel, the Gotthard road tunnel, and the NEAT presented engineers with major challenges. Each of the tunnels shortened More
The content of the film is only available in German, French and Italian. The rising prosperity emerging in the course of the economic miracle lasted until the oil shock of 1973: rising consumption as well as increasing space and energy consumption were changing the landscape. Link to the More
The content of the film is only available in German, French and Italian. The Grosses Moos area had been intensively cultivated ever since the Jura water corrections. Grosses Moos is one of the largest plains in Switzerland and, thus, had become the locale of several projects requiring large More
The A2 motorway connecting Switzerland to Germany was routed through the northern neighbourhoods of Basel – houses had to be demolished to make room for the motorway. Meanwhile, the motorway has been placed underground and this upvalues the urban neighbourhoods. Link to the archives of Memobase
The content of the film is only available in German, French and Italian. In the 1960s, there was a housing shortage. People increasingly moved from the countryside to the cities, and the increase of ever smaller households and the influx of foreign workers outnumbered the newly created housing. More
Die Wohnungsnot in vielen Schweizer Städten nahm nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg durch die Zuwanderung vom Land in die Städte rasant zu. Um zusätzlichen Wohnraum zu schaffen, setzte die Stadt Thun Massnahmen zur Erleichterung des Wohnungsbaus – darunter Überlassung von Bauland – ein. Link zu den Archiven der Memobase
The content of the film is only available in German. In Switzerland, floods regularly destroyed settlements, industrial plants, and agricultural lands. Whole plains were threatened by flooding. To remedy the situation, water corrections were made and flood-control structures erected. Link to the archives of Memobase
The content of the film is only available in German. By the end of the Second World War, people increasingly moved to the cities. Living space was in short supply, and cities suffered from a severe housing shortage. A lot of co-operative housing projects were developed – including More
The content of the film is only available in German and French. The Linth Plains have repeatedly been plagued by severe flooding – most recently in 2005. In order to avert the constant danger of flooding, intensive work has been carried out on the Linth Canal ever since More
The content of the film is only available in German and French. Power-plant projects came into conflict with landscape conservation early on. In the 1940s, the villages of Splügen, Medels, and Nufenen were scheduled to be flooded to allow for the construction of the Rheinwald Dam. However, the More
The content of the film is only available in German and French. Interventions in the landscape and townscape caused people to resist early on. In 1905, the Swiss Heritage Society was founded. Raising the awareness for the wealth of the country as to peasant arts & crafts and More
The content of the film is only available in German and French. In the last three decades previously, a lot of industrial sites had become available in Switzerland, some of them in central locations. As the example of BBC shows, these sites were only accessible to employees. By More
The content of the film is only available in German and French. During the Second World War, the so-called Wahlen Plan provided for the expansion of agricultural land to 500,000 hectares to secure the food supply. The minimum area of crop-rotation land established in 1992 in accordance with More
The content of the film is only available in German. In 1976, the first draft of a Federal law on spatial planning was rejected by the people. The Delegate for Spatial Planning, Marius Baschung, explained the differences between the first draft and the subsequent work on a second More
The content of the film is only available in German. Since the 1950s, Switzerland had been pursuing a strategy of “decentral concentration”. In 1965, the ORL Institute of the ETH Zurich was commissioned to develop models and leitmotifs for the settlement of Switzerland. By 1971 they were available More
The content of the film is only available in German. The Swiss Foundation for Landscape Protection was founded in 1970 by Pro Natura, Swiss Heritage Protection, the Swiss Association for National Planning, the Swiss Alpine Club and the Swiss Tourism Association. In 1972, the Federal Decree on Urgent More
The content of the film is only available in German and French. After the Second World War, people looked for comfort instead of tradition. To make room for new buildings, some towns even wanted to demolish their historic town centres – including Bern. Link to the archives of More
In 1963, Shell bought land in Cressier (NE) and, in 1964, began to build a large refinery there that was put into operation in 1966. A Category 3 national road had already been planned in the Cressier area within the scope of the national-road project 1954-1959. The prospect More
In the 1960s, Zurich’s rapid development began to penetrate as far as the community of Spreitenbach in the Limmat Valley. The former village slowly turned into a part of the Greater Zurich Area. In 1967, the foundation stone for the first Swiss shopping centre was laid here – More
The construction of national roads had to deal with a lot of topographic obstacles. Here, engineering feats came into their own. The new structure was to “perfectly fit into the grand landscape”. However, the impact of the national roads on the spatial structure were largely disregarded in the More
The housing shortage that prevailed in the 1960s, had new construction methods emerge. Innovative construction techniques based on prefabricated concrete elements were tested to allow building more flats in a shorter time. At the same time, there was a call for spatial planning meeting the demand for new More
The construction of the national road network mainly took place between 1965 and 1975. The realization of the new traffic infrastructure was also considered an aesthetic challenge as road construction always involves interventions in the landscape. Link to the archives of RTS
The housing shortage of the 1960s was a topic that was observed with great attention and also was of great political concern. In 1965, the Federal Act on Measures to Promote Housing Construction was enacted. Among other things, the Delegate for Housing Construction advocated setting up Swiss national More
The village landscape as the very emblem of a safe personal biography slowly disappeared, towns grew endlessly and traffic ate up the landscape. “Plan wherever planning is still to be done” became the motto – because land-use planning had started later in Switzerland than in other European countries. More
In the 1960s, “gems of the Swiss landscape” were increasingly caught up in the maelstrom of potential builders and speculators. Measures were sought to curb rising land prices, and the population was made aware of the need to protect the landscape in order to preserve it for posterity. More
From 1954 till 1959, national roads were beginning to be planned. The first section – between Lausanne and Geneva – was opened in 1963 in view of the organization of the Expo ’64 in Lausanne. Switzerland wanted to present itself with a modern transport infrastructure at the Landesausstellung, More
At the end of the 19th century, a water correction took place in the Ticino, and the Magadino Plain was able to develop from marshland into an intensively used agricultural area. In 1974, the Bolle di Magadino Nature Reserve was created. In the following decades, the settled area More
The strong increase of settled areas after the end of the Second World War led to an overheating of the land market in the 1960s. In 1963, the Social Democratic Party SP and the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions submitted the so-called “land-rights initiative” (rejected in 1967). The More
At the beginning of the 1960s, the Halen housing estate was built in a forest clearing near Bern. Halen was built using a construction method focussing on structural density and designed as a communal housing estate intended for families. Link to the archives of Memobase
This programme was broadcast a scant week before the vote on the Volksinitiative, the popular initiative to protect the Lavaux region, launched by environmentalist Franz Weber. Thanks to this initiative, the Lavaux region has been protected by the Vaud Constitution since 1977. In May 2007, the Lavaux region More
After the Second World War, more and more villages were subjected to “settlement pressure” as a result of economic and urban growth. Small villages become agglomeration communities. The contribution shed light on the situation before the Federal Act on Spatial Planning came into force. Link to the archives More
In 1965, a construction consortium planned to develop the village of Surlej in the Upper Engadine lake district into a town of roughly 25,000 inhabitants. The project was prevented by the resistance organized by the Pro Surlej association. The statement by an Engadine inhabitant shown here is an More
In 1972, the authors of this report asked landowners of the municipality of Savièse near Sion in the Canton of Valais whether they had ever sold or would sell land – and why. This contribution reflects the situation of the inhabitants of a mountain village faced with a More
The conference „Vereinigung Landesplanung Schweiz” or Swiss Association of National Planning (VLP-ASPAN) found an answer to the question of: „What is spatial planning?” The respective contribution moreover provided an impression of the spatial dynamics prevailing at the time, shaped by the beginnings of suburbanization. Two weeks before the More
Ever since the 1950s, Swiss municipalities have been confronted with the problem of supply and disposal: rising mountains of trash and increasing amounts of waste water required major investments and a co-operation between municipalities. Link to the archives of Memobase
The Blenio Valley is an example of the problems the mountain regions faced in the post-war period: the villages were marked by emigration. Land consolidations were to keep agriculture in the valley. Switzerland was seeking to safeguard the future of its mountain regions. Link to the archives of More
The construction of the national road system was wholly dedicated to progress: Switzerland was realizing a new road network that promised progress and corresponded to the modern era. However, in the beginning, little thought was spared to the impact on the landscape and settlement structures. Link to the More
To relieve Lausanne of the increasing car traffic, the former industrial district of Flon was to be redeveloped. A two-tier road system for through and city traffic was planned. However, the plans were never implemented. In recent years, the Flon district has developed into an attractive new neighbourhood More
The inauguration of the motorway section between Lausanne and Geneva took place just in time for Expo ’64. The event was celebrated as a “great day for motorized Switzerland”. However, the construction of national roads did not really take into account the spatial impact of the new infrastructure More