2021
On the Furka between Valais and Uri, the road wraps around Hotel Belvédère in the hairpin above the Rhône Glacier. Here the pass house does not stand freely in the landscape but grows out of the geometry of the road; the position and ridge direction of the buildings on the pass respond to wind and drifting snow.
Made for my master’s thesis “vom Passhaus” (On the Pass House) at Graz University of Technology (Institute of Spatial Design, supervised by Prof. Alexander Lehnerer, 2026). A pass house stands where the road reaches its highest point – as a hospice, post and customs station, inn, road keeper’s house or military post, often isolated and snowed in for months. The thesis treats it as a building type of its own and traces its history from the Roman Alpine roads and the medieval hospices to the tunnels that took away the passes’ importance from 1882 onwards, and to the tourism of the high Alpine roads.
A massive stone base, small windows, the entrance on the upper floor, an orientation set by the wind: much about the pass house can be explained by its location, climate and the institution behind it – but not the impression it leaves when it suddenly appears after the last bend. So I visited the houses myself, photographed and drew them. From this way of looking came hand drawings and designs for new pass houses.