Cul zuffel e l’aura dado

Gion A. Caminada

Gion Caminada is one of the main representatives of contemporary Swiss architecture, and he is held in high esteem around the world. For roughly ten years, he has been dealing with his Swiss home town Vrin in Val Lumnezia where he not only works as an architect and town planner, but has also been politically active.

After the community of Vrin had lost ever more of its residents due to outward migration, strategies were elaborated that were meant to counteract a further dwindling of the population and thus secure the survival of the village on the basis of its agricultural structure. However, the rationalization of agricultural working methods made it necessary for new utility buildings to be constructed for farming. They were architecturally designed by Gion Caminada who is also responsible for the fact that the cohesive historical townscape of Vrin and the surrounding hamlets was not destroyed like elsewhere. He developed buildings for his home region, the aesthetics of which goes as far as their attachment to traditions and their functionality. The community has received several prizes for its architecture that is exemplary for the entire Alpine region, the latest one being the Arge Alp prize 2004.
In addition to a large number of utility and residential buildings, the school of Duvin and the Unterhaus, a girls' boarding school that belongs to the monastic school of Disentis, carry the architectural trademark of Gion Caminada. Only recently, he stood out with the reconstruction of the small hotel Alpina in Vals.

The title of the exhibition, Cul zuffel e l'aura dado, can be translated as "Architecture with the Winds": "zuffel" is how the inhabitants of Vrin traditionally call a rough, stormy, yet not very cold wind from the south. It blows from the mountain peaks and the adjoining plateau Greina down into the Val Lumnezia (comparable with the drama of a foehn storm elsewhere). In spite of its lyrical name, "l'aura dado" is no mild breeze. Rather, it is a cold, biting gust that rushes across the remote corners of the valley from the north. Each of the two air currents brings different information into the valley or forms the character of the people living here and of their environment in a specific way.

As the exhibition title, Cul zuffel e l'auro dado is to be understood as the sum of aspects that have accompanied and influenced Gion Caminada on his way from a carpenter to an architect. As an acknowledged draftsman, he accepted the offer of a chair at the renowned ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, where he has been working as an assistant professor ever since.

Biography of Gion A. Caminada

Born 1957 in Vrin
Apprenticeship as a carpenter
Attendance at the Kunstgewerbeschule [arts and crafts school]
Postgraduate course of architectural studies at the ETH
Architect's office in Vrin
Since 1998, assistant professor at the ETH in Zurich for architecture and design

List of Works

Town planning and creative planning, Vrin
Renovation and construction of the town hall, Vrin
Construction of the community hall, Vrin
Construction of the school, Duvin
Residential buildings and barns, Val Lumnezia and Surselva
Residential building Walpen, Blatten/VS
Telephone booth, Vrin
Direct selling slaughterhouse, Vrin
Mortuary (stiva da morts), Vrin
Reconstruction of the Hotel Alpina, Vals
Construction of the Unterhaus, a girls' monastic boarding school, Disentis

Awards

Award for exemplary buildings in the Grisons canton 1994 and 2001, Geißenalp, Vrin; residential building Segmüller, Vignogn; school, Duvin
SAB prize of the Swiss Working Group for the Mountain Regions [Schweizer Arbeitsgemeinschaft für die Berggebiete]
Bruckmann environmental prize, Munich
Swiss prize for free art
Architectural prize for construction ecology, community hall, Vrin
Prix Lignum, barns and slaughterhouse, Vrin
Internationaler Preis für Neues Bauen in den Alpen [international prize for modern building in the Alps] from Sexten Kultur, town planning and creative planning, Vrin; school, Duvin
Recognition prize of the Grisons government
Grisons wood construction prize, stiva da morts
Arge Alp prize 2004, architektur-formen-alpen-gestalten [architecture-forming-alps-designing], town planning and creative planning, Vrin

Various prizes in architectural competitions