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Muzeum Susch

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SUSCH

ARCHITECTURE

‘The architecture is a non-ego architecture, working with the landscape and the spaces in-between to create a self-evident place for art,’ says Chasper Schmidlin, who designed Muzeum Susch, together with Lukas Voellmy.

Instead of seeking to dominate its surroundings, Muzeum Susch has been destined to form an ensemble as part of the historic village, nestled in the Alpine village on the foot of Flüela pass. The Muzeum’s architecture is not a neutral container for art but an integral component of the institution’s identity. Historic masonry, newly excavated galleries, exposed rock and flowing water render successive layers of time and make historical traces perceptible across the site. The material presence of nature, outside and inside the Muzeum, is a constant reminder of the continuum of time we exist in.

Between 2015 and 2018, Schmidlin and Voellmy worked in close and continued dialogue with Grażyna Kulczyk, the Muzeum’s founder and an experienced Erbauerin (the initiator and visionary force behind the project) to transform the group of buildings with shared histories past into a coherent whole for future imaginaries. The surviving structures of the medieval monastery complex –including a former vicarage, hospice and service building– with the new brewery added in the 19th century were brought into a new visual and functional relationship. Throughout the design and construction process, the Muzeum’s programme was conceived and continued to evolve, while additional buildings were incorporated into the project.

The ensemble is of considerable historical and landscape value and protected under cantonal heritage legislation. The historic fabric was carefully restored while most additional space was created by going into the mountain. New galleries were excavated from the solid rock beneath and alongside the buildings. The first phase involved more than a year of controlled blasting and excavation, removing approximately 10,000 tonnes of locally occurring amphibolite. Part of the excavated rock was crushed and reintroduced into the architecture in a transformed form. Mixed with local sand from the Inn river, it became part of the polished terrazzo floors in the galleries; other fragments were reused in the dry-stone walls outside the museum. The material thus remains visibly present within the architecture made possible by its removal. Together, the restored buildings and newly excavated rooms provide approximately 1,500 square metres of exhibition space.

An underground passage beneath the street connects the Bieraria Veglia — the oldest surviving part of the former monastic complex, subsequently used as the old brewery — with the Bieraria, the brewery building erected in the 19th century. It re-establishes a functional route used during the brewery’s operation, when beer barrels were moved between the two buildings. Today, it forms part of the visitor’s journey: the museum is entered not through a monumental gesture, but by moving underground, into the mountain. Water runs freely across the open rock formations where sediments are changing colour and gradually build up the structure greeting the visitors entering the Muzeum. The mineral traces mark the passing of time and the slow approach suggested for the visit. A natural rock grotto and the former brewery’s cooling spaces retain the visible and audible presence of water beyond the tunnel. Flowing across exposed rock, it keeps the mountain active within the interior. Rock, water and material traces make time tangible, encouraging the attentive and unhurried encounter with art for which Muzeum Susch was conceived.

19 January 2019 : MUZEUM SUSCH @ the Met
In Our Time: A Year of Architecture in a Day
Trailer by Aesop

Muzeum Susch is fundamentally characterised by a series of permanent installations by international contemporary artists to arrive at Muzeum Susch and to interact with the architecture and the site’s idiosyncratic structure. The permanently installed works were either conceived for and with their particular placement in mind, or –expanding the general notion of site-specific works– the actual spaces attributed to already existing artworks where tailor-made and built to measure. These works do not merely occupy the architecture; they reveal and recalibrate it. Each permanent installation contributes to the evolving character and distinctive layout of the museum, creating a particular choreography between the buildings, the artworks and the temporary exhibitions on view.

The landscape architecture by Günther Vogt is equally integral to the project. Terraced walls modulate the slope around the Muzeum, strengthening the relationship between the buildings, the village and the surrounding Alpine terrain. Local river stones of differing colours and textures, cut into slabs of varying sizes and thicknesses, are arranged within dark natural-stone walls. Together, they are supposed to form a material record of the site’s geology — a Landscape Library. The concept brings together both elements: a place for retreat, from the lively museum atmosphere, and the exhibition of natural history. At the same time, the walls supplementing the architecture and highlighting the extension of the monastic history define the Muzeum complex in its entity.

Muzeum Susch continues to evolve through new permanent commissions, temporary exhibitions and changing relationships between works and their settings. Its architecture remains an active framework rather than a finished monument — attentive to what came before while remaining open to future interpretations and uses.

Muzeum Susch has been widely discussed in the international architectural press. Critics have focused in particular on the project’s integration of historic fabric, contemporary art and Alpine geology, as well as on the experience of entering the Muzeum by moving through the mountain.

FURTHER READING

The architecture and intellectual foundations of the institution are explored in depth in Muzeum Susch: Alpine Laboratory, edited by Jennifer Higgie and published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König. The publication brings together essays, conversations and fiction by contributors including Alice Rawsthorn, Chasper Schmidlin, Mareike Dittmer, Brian Dillon, Kirsty Bell, Paweł Goźliński, Chloe Aridjis and Siri Hustvedt, with architectural photography by Hélène Binet and drawings by Marek Lamber (the latter based on plans by Schmidlin and Voellmy).

As Higgie writes: “This is a story of excavations: not only of rock and soil but of history, folklore and architecture; of the various ideas and impulses that inspire artists to create their unique objects.”

SELECTED ARTICLES AND REVIEWS

ARCHITECTRURE AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS

In February 2020, Muzeum Susch won the Swiss-Architects readers’ vote for Building of the Year 2019, after being named Building of the Week in May 2019. The project was also included in the final selection for the ECOLA Award 2018/2019.

Its broader international recognition includes its inclusion in TIME’s ⁠World’s Greatest Places 2019⁠. Muzeum Susch was one of 100 destinations selected worldwide.

The museum was also ranked number 23 in Oliver Wainwright’s selection of The Best Architecture of the 21st Century⁠, published in The Guardian in 2019.

Muzeum Susch was subsequently shortlisted as one of three European candidates for the 2020 New Cultural Destination Award. Art Stations Foundation CH / Muzeum Susch and Grażyna Kulczyk were also named European Cultural Investor of the Year 2019.


Further architecture reviews and articles about Muzeum Susch can be found in our Selected Press archive.




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↗ The book 'Muzeum Susch: Alpine Laboratory'