Searching for the invisible
Troncs 12-14 © Bauart / Yves André
Published by Espazium - Les éditions de la culture du bâti, the latest issue in the “Bâtisseurs suisses” series is devoted to the renovation of two high-rise apartment buildings in Serrières, in the heights of the city of Neuchâtel. Carried out by Bauart, this renovation of buildings dating from the 1970s demonstrates an approach that is both architecturally discreet and environmentally ambitious. The publication includes an interview with Prof. Emmanuel Rey detailing an architectural approach that integrates Baukultur issues and ecological transition objectives.
The “Bâtisseurs suisses” series documents large-scale projects and exceptional works in Switzerland. Here, it focuses on the renovation of two high-rise apartment buildings. The renovation was carried out in small steps, resulting from a sensitive approach and a proportionate control of efforts, which finds its coherence between heritage preservation, ecological ambition, and socio-economic reality: “an intervention playing on the frontier between visible and invisible”.
The publication highlights that the architect's role cannot be reduced to resolving conflicts arising from sometimes contradictory standards. On the contrary, the architect's expertise lies first in understanding the possible course of action and then only in projecting, based on scenarios drawn up in conjunction with the client. In this renovation project, the invisibility of the intervention became one of the decisive parameters for both parties.
The rehabilitation of these two emblematic buildings of the post-war housing boom illustrates a sensitive decision-making process, an intervention, that at first glance, appears to result from an accumulation of strategic choices but whose success is due to global thinking. What if the invisible were driving the architectural concept?
