Tag Archives: swiss alps

Public Realm

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When urban landscape becomes public realm

Bonigen Alpabzug

 

What is urban landscape and what is public realm?

This is a September 2013 view of main street in the center of Bonigen, a Swiss town of roughly 2,000 people.  It is a town that has been for centuries.

Every summer the Bonigen farmers take their cows on a journey to the high Alp ‘pastures’.  The above view shows the festival of the cows’ return journey (Alpabzug) from the high Alps.  The cows and other grazing animals are feted.  Plants and flowers make up head dresses for the cows.  And all the residents come to cheer for them as they are paraded down main street.

The urban landscape, the public realm overflows with landscape and agricultural realities–the realities of inter-relationships among people, plants, animals and landscape.

People connecting with landscape via…

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…music.

Most North Americans are overwhelmed by the convenience and connectivity of the various forms of public transport in Switzerland.  It is an effectively interwoven network that begins at the airports and train stations where it is most dense.  Then it gradually thins out as you travel higher into the mountains and further away from the cities.

At the final destination, you can find Swiss people in blissful contact with the landscape, as the following images demonstrate.

How much do you think access to this landscape pleasure is worth in any urban design?

Look at the faces of these people 2,250 meters above mean sea level…transcendental enjoyment if I have ever seen it!  Music, people, landscape.

The landscape above

The landscape below

Alphorns

Alphorn painted details

Alphorn craftsmanship

Landscape, alphorns, people

Landscape, people, music

People and music

People and music

People in the landscape

Gnomes, Chelsea 2013 or otherwise…

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In 2013, the Royal Horticultural Society admitted Gnomes to the Chelsea Flower Show, but only by caveat that they be used to help grow funding to encourage younger people’s interest in horticulture.  This fit nicely into British tradition, well delineated by David Bowie’s 1967 single, The Laughing Gnome, available here on YouTube.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQxTWDLZ8o?rel=0&w=400&h=300]

But the last word is, in a true Germanic sense, very serious, written by Franz Hartmann 1895, Among the Gnomes, An Occult Tale of Adventure in the Untersberg.  The Untersberg is a mountain on the border of Germany and Austria.  Within the Untersberg are unterwegs connecting…connecting to…Bonigen, Switzerland, where…

 

 

I discovered these fellows doing their duties.