Alps as Process — Engaging Montane Switzerland as an Operating Urban Ecology

Abstract

What started as a research project on underground urbanization and mega-infrastructures in Switzerland became a thesis project on the Alps as a whole: from significant changes in climate conditions, heavy infrastructural intensification, to concentrated real-estate boom together with simultaneous abandonment and decline, a whole series of dynamic forces are currently pressing on the European Alps while thoroughly changing its geography and territorial relationships. As new yet indispensable phenomena, these urban transformations heavily question the predominant static and isolated view of the picturesque and natural alpine landscapes as well as the conservation and preservation efforts behind them. Through the lens of the new Transalpine Rail Tunnel in Switzerland (AlpTransit), the largest and deepest tunnel on earth, the paper outlines a radical rethinking of the Alps not only as an thoroughly urbanized and artificial territory in transition, but as an operating urban ecology itself where processes of urbanization, de-urbanization, growth and shrinkage become the programmatic vectors of a systemic and flexible design approach.

Keywords

Alps / Infrastructure / Alps Transalpine Rail Tunnel / Urban Ecology

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Higher Education Press