The Laws of Foreign Buildings: Flat Roofs and Minarets - Michael ...

Guggenheim 9
Germany’ (Keller et al., 2001: 22). Indeed, the architect Paul Bonatz denounced the German
Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, one of the most famous projects of modernist
architecture, as ‘suburbia of Jerusalem’ (Hammerbacher and Keuerleber, 2002: 16) and
a postcard showed the Weissenhofsiedlung as an ‘Arab village’ with Bedouins on camels
as inhabitants (Hammerbacher and Keuerleber, 2002: 12).
Two years later the situation seemed to worsen. Herman Metz obtained permission to
build his new villa ‘Rocca Vispa’, designed by the architect Carl Weidemeyer, who had
already built the modernist theatre San Materno. Construction had begun and the shell
was already finished when the building authorities received complaints about the architecture
from the local population. The authorities issued a decree to stop construction,
but failed to inform the building owners. Only when they sent police officers on site did
construction came to halt. After the lawyer Marcionni called the federal court on behalf
of Metz they were allowed to go on with construction work. Again Maraini was asked to
provide an expertise and this time he maintained that the building did not disturb the
landscape and that he could not understand the behaviour of the authorities. Maraini now
distinguished between good and bad modern buildings and found the Villa Rocca Vispa
to be a good exemplar (Keller et al., 2001: 25). With this decision, modern buildings with
flat roofs were established as legitimate exemplars of Ticinese architecture.
Eduard Keller, in his account of the story, tried to interpret the case as an encounter
between an enlightened professional architect, who derives his knowledge from modernist
ideas, and natives steeped in tradition. Referring to the size of windows he noted that
the traditional house in Ticino had small windows to which the ‘natives’, who ‘lack the
need to unite with nature’, ‘stick with dogged energy’, since they prefer to sit in ‘dim
half-light’ (Keller et al., 2001: 34). However, the ‘foreigner (among whom the Swiss
from the German speaking part has to be counted) . . . wants to see the beautiful landscape
even in bad weather’ (Keller et al., 2001: 34) (see Figures 4 and 5).
Keller also noted that the traditional houses had granite roofs, or more recently tiled
roofs, and he deplored the tendency to add attic conversions – and the failure of the
authorities to prevent them. In contrast, he praised the flat roof for providing either a terrace
or being of lighter construction. To build flat roofs, Keller maintains, it needs an
‘expert and a significant budget’ (Keller et al., 2001: 38). With this, he not only meant
to argue for modern buildings, but to redefine the idea of mutilation and divert it away
from specific forms to the bad practice of lay people in general. Keller complained:
‘Every mason, apprentice and layman can call himself architect and what results from
this is well known’. The practice of modern architecture should thus include the ‘education
of the people’ (Keller et al., 2001: 27). The resistance against the new architecture
for Keller was ignorance: ‘Before people try to understand the new, they fight it’ because
it is an ‘ ... uncommon picture, that [they] cannot process in [their] brains’ (Keller et al.,
2001: 19–20).
The fight between Keller and the other modernists against the authorities of Ascona
provides an example of the central problem of all legal attempts to protect the cityscape.
If such laws should protect the existing, they have to define it in a formal language and
they have to create stable networks between building parts, meanings and uses. The
study of Ascona shows how both parties struggle to discursively create such stable networks
and constantly fail. Two problems intersect. First, the place and time of the
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