Book Review: New Monte Rosa Hut Swiss Alpine Club

Review by Sam Demas; for pictures of Monte Rosa Hut, see photo gallery

Hut design is a prized architectural specialty in Switzerland, and this book is a prism through which to view this specialty — as well as to learn about the remarkable New Monte Rosa Hut.  This beautifully produced book comprises 6 thoughtful introductory essays providing historical and architectural context for the project, 15 informative technical notes on key aspects of the project, many architectural drawings, and dozens of beautiful photographs.  Published shortly after construction, it is a both a form of public documentation and a celebration of this remarkable design and construction project of ETH-Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.  It was published in conjunction with a 2010 exhibition on the hut.

The New Monte Rosa Hut is not just a hut, it is an ongoing research project.  It is unique in its status as a flagship research and development project marking the 150th anniversary of ETH-Zurich, in the highly collaborative design and construction process, in its very high cost, and in its ambitious research aims: the optimization and integration of all its building systems to produce the highest level of self-sufficiency possible.

The general reader will most likely be interested in the photographs and drawings, and in the overview essays on the history of hut design in Switzerland, mountaineering in Switzerland, self-sufficiency, and the conversation “The Hut Enters the Modern World”.  American architects will learn a great deal from the essays, and will also appreciate the technical notes, and thoughts on the challenges of designing for and building in hostile environments.   What follows are some highlights of themes treated in the introductory essays and a list of the 15 technical notes.

The patient reader will be rewarded with a brief history of hut design in the essay “Building in the Mountains” by Adolph Stiller, an architect and a scholar and curator of architectural exhibitions and publications.  Stiller discusses the tension between traditional architectural forms and modernist trends as reflected in hut architecture.  Conservative architectural views call for adaptation of huts to the surroundings and advocates “mimetic assimilation of to a culturally determined image of the landscape derived from the collective memory….” (i.e. what some call the “Heidi hut”).  While innovative architectural views assert that “only an architectural volume that stands out sharply against its rocky environs can be truly authentic”.  Especially useful is his explanation of and examples from the period of innovation between the two world wars, which presaged contemporary Swiss hut design.  His discussion of the views of leading alpine architects and critics is helpful to those of us who are new to the specialty of hut design.

“The Discovery of the Peaks: a brief history of mountaineering with particular reference to Monte Rosa” by Marie-Anne Lerjen, editor at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH-Zurich, touches on the evolution of the concept of the sublime and explicates the role of scientists in opening up the Alps by naming the peaks and conducting topographic and mining surveys and other research to help the new nation-state of Switzerland appropriate the Alps firmly into its natural resources and natural history legacy, and its cultural ethos.  The first Alpine Club in Europe was in England (1857), with the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) following in 1863 (and later the Swiss Women’s Alpine Club which operated until 1980) with determination that “we shouldn’t leave the Swiss peaks to the English”.  The building of SAC huts was part of the opening of the alps to tourism by developing an infrastructure of hotels, railroads and guiding services.  In the early 20th century this was followed in Switzerland (as it was in the USA) with a conservation movement in opposition to the exploitation and “industrialization” of the mountain landscape and its natural features.

“The Hut Enters the Modern Era”, the transcribed conversation among three ETH-Zurich professors who played key roles in the Monte Rosa project (Professors Akos Moravanszky, Andrea Deplazes, and David Gugerli), is a delightful romp through a range of issues including: the inception of the project and its planning team, the intense focus on sustainability and the project as a case study for the use of technically advanced systems,  the tensions inherent (in relation to architectural style) in a collaboration between ETH-Zurich and SAC, the historical pattern of using traditional hut design to “conceal what the SAC was really doing…” and to “render the conquest of the Alps acceptable….” [to locals, I presume], and the “shotgun wedding” of traditionalist elements/ornamentation (e.g. digitally carved designs emulating tree-rings and signifying handicraft traditions) with a modernist aesthetic.

 “Base Camp for Ecological Construction: The New Monte Rosa Hut makes use of materials available in situ”  by Paul Knusel, environmental scientist and journalist, discusses: the building adaptations to the extreme environment; the approach of coordinating the disparate energy systems into one coherent system; the strategy of combining both reduction in the use of energy and energy generation systems to achieve a climate-friendly, low-emission building management system; issues in the use of solar technology; and discussion of key materials (e.g. local wood sources and high-tech glass).

The informative technical notes include pieces on:

Architecture – Andrea Deplazes, Marcel Baum

ETH Studio Monte Rosa – Andrea Deplazes, Marcel Baumgartner

Principal – Peter Planche

SAC hut construction – Peter Buchel

Structure – Tivadar Puskas, Jan Stebler

Timber construction – Hansbeat Reusser

Fire protection – Hansbeat Reusser, Mario Fontana

Geology – Charles-Louis Joris

Building physics – Christoph Keller

Energy and building technology – Matthias Sulzer, Urs-Peter Menti

Building automation – Lino Guzzella, Samuel Fux

Sustainability – Stephanie Hellweg, Melanie Goymann

Digital fabrication – Fabio Gramzio, Matthias Kohler, tobias Bonwetsch, Ralph Bartschi

Building process – Hans Zurniwen, Sacha Menz

Firms – Marcel Baumgartner, Hans Zurniwen

All in all this is an important purchase for architecture libraries and a book that will reward the attention of anyone interested in the design, architecture, and sustainability features of mountain huts.  It is a valuable window into the Swiss tradition in hut architecture.

New Monte Rosa Hut SAC published by ETH-Zurich under their imprint gta, 2010, Zurich.  U.S. distribution by University of Chicago Press.