«Endgültige Form wird von der Architektin am Bau bestimmt.»

The exhibition draws from a remarkable piece of architecture by Lisbeth Sachs (1914–2002), one of the first registered women architects in Switzerland and a contemporary of Bruno Giacometti, who designed the Swiss Pavilion in the Giardini. This proximity in time, albeit not in space, leads to the question: What if Lisbeth Sachs had designed the Swiss Pavilion? Impertinent at first glance, yet both architects designed pavilions in the 1950s for the display of artworks. Giacometti’s Pavilion for the Biennale in Venice was completed in 1952. Meanwhile, Sachs’s short-lived Kunsthalle, conceived for the Swiss Exhibition for Women’s Work (Saffa), held in Zurich in 1958, was demolished and survived as a project in the archives. The act of (re)construction in the present day highlights an arresting absence in the No Woman’s Land of the Giardini—all 29 national pavilions are authored by men.

A site-specific sound installation made of field recordings spanning one-and-a-half years—from conversations to construction sounds—reveals the richness of the project’s process and introduces another dimension to the architecture, that of listening. Past and present voices merge into a “resounding architecture,” creating an archive of sounds that
brings the space to life.

The project is led by the four architects Elena Chiavi, Kathrin Füglister, Amy Perkins, and Myriam Uzor, who form the group Annexe, and the embedded artist Axelle Stiefel. Annexe makes use of fiction to revive the work of pioneering women designers, opening a discussion with and learning from those who have come before us.

What If It Were Otherwise?

Unearthing the Kunsthalle by Lisbeth Sachs and building it into the present evokes the spatial memory of lesser­known women architects. Sachs (1914– 2002) was one of the first registered female architects in Switzerland and a contemporary of Bruno Giacometti, who designed the Swiss Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale in Venice. The fragmentary reinterpretation of this particular pavilion fosters a structural and symbolic dialogue: Concrete is translated into wood; the centralized lighting system, as it appears in the original plan, becomes an acoustic vehicle of transmission—between Sachs’s generation and ours, but also between the architectural and artistic concepts. As light is turned into sound, the Kunsthalle tips into another dimension in an act of constant tuning. A negotiation takes place around the preservation of the two overlaid structures, which could not be more different in their formal language.

By injecting the unknown into the known, we slip into the of the uncanny, without any other justification than to ask the obvious: What if it were otherwise realm?

And for us to answer: you have to live it to believe it. And sometimes, you have to build it to feel it.

The Kunsthalle by Lisbeth Sachs

Lisbeth Sachs’s original design for the Kunsthalle presents a distinctive approach to form, structure, movement, and landscape. Conceived as a temporary pavilion for the Swiss Exhibition of Women’s Work (Saffa), held in Zurich in 1958, it was demolished shortly after the exhibition’s conclusion. The objects displayed on the radially arranged walls were experienced in concert with the surrounding landscape: Translucent membrane roofs, stretched like umbrellas around central columns, diffused the daylight pouring in from above. Poles, walls, and rings worked in tensile harmony to stabilize the open structure, inviting a fluid inward movement from park to pavilion. Along with the ebb and flow of curtains and people, the space itself became a performative choreography:

“Wandernd, schlendernd, auf geschwungener freier Spur.” (“Wandering, ambling along curved, open paths.”)

Annexe is a group of women architects who value and foreground a culture of construction which starts with what is already at hand.

Acting at the intersection of architecture and performance, Annexe attaches to the existing, opening new spatial possibilities. The group uses fiction as a tool to bring to life the work of pioneering women designers, initiating a discussion with—and learning from—those who have come before us. Annexe’s work is relational, connecting the past to the present and material resources to immaterial knowledge. The group offers a vehicle for accommodating forms of collaboration and feminist building practices.

“Listening Out” as a Practice of Making Things Public

With the incorporation of a site-specific sound installation, the Swiss Pavilion is transformed into a multisensory experience. The project’s process has been documented through field recordings, which capture conversations, places, and on-site construction.

Evolving with time and movement, this sound composition invites you to encounter a “resounding architecture,” an immersive spatial memory (e)merging from past and present voices. The non-linear nature of the installation not only connects different actors; it also allows for an understanding of architecture that transcends its role as a mere spatial structure and becomes a resonant body, alive with sound.

The unfinished—or rather: the open-ended—is the realm of the poetic, where conventional ways of thinking are suspended, and a new space is imagined. This fictional space asks us to reflect on important questions: How should we live and build today? What is our relationship to nature? How do we position ourselves as individuals yet as part of a collective?

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Into the spaceship, Granny

‘Me?’ she’ll say, just a trifle slyly. ‘But I never did anything’. ‘You ought to send one of those scientist men, they can talk to those funny-looking green people. Maybe Dr. Kissinger should go. What about sending the Shaman?’¹ – Ursula K. Le Guin

It’s a leap of faith you are taking. For there is no explanation for this journey. Stepping into a parallel world. Carving your way through the strangest of circumstances. Put on your 4D glasses.

Imagine: Ursula K. Le Guin calls on humanity to ponder who might ‘fairly’ represent humankind to the aliens. Could it be the one who has lived the longest, standing at the ‘edge of the world’—like Grandma, with all her life experience?

Picture this: Grandma returns in a dematerialized form after her journey to another world, bearing an enigmatic blueprint reading: ‘Endgültige Form wird von der Architektin am Bau bestimmt.’ (The final form will be determined by the architect on site).

The architects of the group Annexe receive this message and take on the challenge of engaging in the search for a final form—a construction within the Swiss Pavilion. Lisbeth Sachs’ short-lived Kunsthalle for the 1958 Swiss Exhibition of Women’s Work (Saffa) in Zurich inspires a bold architectural gesture overlaid on Bruno Giacometti’s 1952 building. This is a material endeavour: Sachs’ blueprint is mirrored, inverted, and juxtaposed with Giacometti’s plan. This reversal strikes us with reality, hitting our retina. Modernity was birthed in the reversal of print and matrix.

Sachs’ design invited the park into the exhibition space, annihilating the very logic of the binary—not just blurring boundaries but exposing their artificiality. This architectural gesture performs a quiet revolution: where once stood opposition (inside/outside, permanent/ephemeral, present/absent), there remains only fluid becoming. The final form exists precisely to put its own existence into question—a deliberate assertion that architecture is never truly complete.

We embark on a turbulent journey to the unstable grounds of the Biennale’s Giardini—a ‘No Woman’s Land’. The Kunsthalle becomes a symbol of failed communication. We pause to revisit an old problem: the absence, the discontinuity, the impermanence of life. In the cracks of reality and history, science fiction gives us an orientation for moving into new spaces and dimensions. (AS)

1. Le Guin, Ursula, “The Space Crone (1976)”, in Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places, Grove Press (2017), p. 207. ↩︎