Contextual Design – BA2 S2 2026

[ La cabane qui murmurait ]

The Cabanotel, perched at 1,800 metres in the Val d’Hérens in Valais, was born from the transformation of the Hôtel du Col d’Hérens, built in 1876. Neither hut nor hotel, but both at once, it retains its outer shell while its interior has been entirely redesigned through a logic of reuse, short supply chains, and territorial anchoring.

This book takes the building as its starting point, not to document its architecture, but to give voice to what remains silent within it: reclaimed, moved, and reinstalled materials, and the people involved throughout the construction process. Structured in four chapters—construction, deconstruction, storage, and reconstruction—it brings together the voice of the house and that of the building site.

Time is a character in its own right. In the mountains, the seasons slow down the construction process and open up space between stages. This book seeks to make perceptible what cannot be seen, what the house itself remembers.
 

Cio che Rimane

Schloss Rapperswil

crepaccio e mulini, PARK ARCH AG, 2025

Four fold-out posters, two languages, a single ascent. A printed object translating the encounter between the medieval stone of Rapperswil Castle and contemporary interventions.

Taking the recent renovation of the castle as its starting point, the project distills its essence rather than documenting its image. Structured by verticality, at the core of both the building and its architectural intervention, the series consists of four posters. On the front, four architectural texts. On the back, a medieval tale in eight parts, printed in two layers, retraces the ascent of a female knight to the top of the castle.

Designed as an object for reading, the project extends the visit to the castle and reveals the dialogue between these two temporalities.

Par Hélène Prongué

Cabanotel, mémoire alpine

In the heart of the Val d’Hérens, the Cabanotel carries on the legacy of the Hôtel du Col d’Hérens, built in 1876 and kept within the same family for nearly a century and a half. In 2021, its transfer to the Valais architect Olivier Cheseaux marked the beginning of a careful renovation, respectful of the building and its history.

On the occasion of the hotel’s 150th anniversary, this book retraces this human story through testimonies, archival documents, mountain narratives, and observations of the surrounding territory. It is structured around three temporalities: that of the Alpine landscape, unchanged and timeless; that of the building, passed down and transformed across generations; and that of the people who have inhabited, passed through, or kept it alive.
 

Jardin d’enfants Mööslistrasse

The Mööslistrasse kindergarten is a transformation project in Zurich, developed from former residential units integrated into a municipal depot from the 1930s. Faced with a lack of space for early childhood facilities, the architects chose to transform the existing rather than build anew. The project is based on reuse and continuity: reclaimed materials, preserved elements, and new interventions coexist within a single spatial system. The removal of partitions allows for a redistribution of uses and an adaptation of the building to a collective function.

My editorial project translates these principles into an abstract graphic language. Simple forms, flat colour fields, and minimal compositions aim to make visible the ideas of de-partitioning, reuse, and transformation of the existing.

The texts, short and direct, take the form of architectural manifestos. The choice of a cardboard-bound book echoes the world of childhood and reinforces the idea of a simple, tactile, and pedagogical object.

The publication becomes an extension of the architectural project: transforming without erasing, building with what already exists, and proposing a new reading of space through minimal interventions.

Buswartehäuschen Ilanz

The project takes as its starting point the dispersion of bus shelters in Ilanz. Separated from one another, they offer a fragmented experience of the territory. Each shelter thus becomes part of a larger whole.

The project consists of a series of posters integrated into the bus shelters. They combine timetable information with a fragmented image. As one moves between stops, the images gradually complete and overlap. The whole reflects principles of assembly and layering found in architecture.

Each shelter becomes a fragment of an image that users reconstruct through their journeys.

Par Jonas Zesiger