Look at those stark reinforced concrete walls!

Switzerland has a deep connection with Brutalist architecture (after all, the movement is considered to have its roots in LeCourbousier among others), and while by and large Brutalism has mostly died down around the world by the early Eighties… Not so much in Switzerland! Or, at least, here in Ticino (the Italian-speaking, southernmost Canton).

I mean… Mario Botta, famous starchitect, has his studio less than one km from my house, and boy does he like the geometric shapes, the stark lines and the naked concrete. And it’s not just him: the propensity for the use of naked, unpainted concrete in very rational-shaped buildings is alive and well around here.

But, you might think, how is this a “Swiss Oddity”?

Check again the opening photo. I drive by it almost every day. Fancy, uh? You’d think it was some office building, or modernist house. But no…

It’s the tractor garage of a farm! A fancy, super modern, brutalist tractor garage.

To compound the oddity, the farm is part of the Canton’s Agronomy School and Farm (translating roughly) and its main building, on the opposite side of the road, is a 1700s villa.