Herzog & de Meuron offer help

Blats will soon be rebuilt where a rubble cone is located today. The community is offered prominent help: from the architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who once pleaded for the retreat from the Lötschental.

They built the St. Jakob Park and the Roche tower in Basel, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Olympic Stadium in Beijing: Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (both 75). With their around 600 employees worldwide, they are among the most important architects in Switzerland.

Now the architecture firm is dealing with the future of the destroyed Valais village of Blatten. At a meeting on Thursday evening, Mayor Matthias Bellwald presented the population a roadmap for the reconstruction of the village after the devastating clash.

As early as 2028, the first new buildings are to be built in the spilled village center. As Bellwald said in front of the municipal meeting, various renowned architectural firms offered the village of Blatten to the reconstruction. Including Herzog & de Meuron.

« Zones of decline and the slow expression »

The fact that the Basel star architects want to build a new village where a dystopian veneer landscape made of rubble and ice is now not without irony.

This category- put it simply- directed them as follows: The original reasons for the settlement and management of the higher alpine areas from the 11th century- the space and food shortages in the deeper layers- had become obsolete. The emigration had reinforced due to the darkened economic perspectives: agriculture had become more unproductive compared to the middle edge, tourism only lucrative in a few hotspots (the « alpine resorts »).

Department of the Alps « no catastrophe »

It should be doubted « that these transformation problems can be steamed with money in the long run, » it says. Switzerland should detach itself from the myth that the same possibilities and perspectives would have to exist at any location. It is undisputed that this upheaval « leads to serious difficulties from the close view of the villages and residents ». However, the task of the continuous cultivation of the alpine valleys and the return of large, alpine zones in nature is not a disaster.

At the request of the “Switzerland on weekends”, a spokeswoman for the architecture firm writes that Herzog & de Meuron is very affected by fate that the Valais community had suffered: “Our thoughts are among the residents.” As the two star architects stand up to the “Alpine Brache” today, remains unknown.