Note from the editor:

After the Second World War, talented young architects including several from Switzerland, turned to the task of promoting the ideals of Modernism. Their main interest lay in furthering the new design and construction methods which were then being made possible by industrial prefabrication and montage, even considering and incorporating them at the design stage. The time has now come to review this chapter of recent architectural history.

This publication focuses on four architects: Werner Frey (1912-1989), Franz Füeg (born 1921), Jacques Schader (born 1917) and Jakob Zweifel (born 1921). This group of Zurich architects created buildings which can be seen to embody the typical features of the architecture emerging from the late 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s: fastidious construction methods, a structural approach to designing brought about by increased use of prefabricated parts, an awareness of different social needs of the individual and the group which were subsequently reflected in the designs. Using a wealth of historical illustrations together with photographs by Doris Fanconi and 8 documentary films by Georg Radanowicz, visually interpreting the architecture from a contemporary viewpoint, this book is an invaluable documentation and analysis of those buildings which are of consequence for today’s architecture.