In the remote Alpine valley of Giornico, in the southern Swiss canton of Ticino, is La Congiunta, a concrete monolith by Peter Märkli completed in 1992. Commissioned as a permanent home for the plaster and bronze sculptures of Swiss artist Hans Josephsohn, the museum quietly asserts itself as an architectural manifesto of restraint, material clarity, and spatial intensity. Unpublicized, unsigned, and unheated, it stands not as an object of spectacle but as a device for perception, demanding attention rather than attraction.
La Congiunta Museum Technical Information
- Architects1-3: Peter Märkli
- Location: Giornico, Ticino, Switzerland
- Gross Area: 150 m² | 1,615 Sq. Ft.
- Completion Year: 1992
- Photographs: © Aldo Amoretti, © Trevor Patt, Flickr User
The building is like a box, closed and silent, to protect the sculptures and allow for concentration.
– Peter Märkli
La Congiunta Museum Photographs
Context and Commissioning
La Congiunta arises from an uncommon convergence of artistic integrity and architectural conviction. Sculptor Hans Josephsohn, known for his exploration of the human figure in raw material, sought a space to house a selection of his works permanently. The project’s location, Giornico, with its Romanesque churches and vernacular stone constructions, offers a backdrop of historical gravity and isolation. This context was not merely atmospheric but foundational. Märkli’s design does not mimic the architectural language of its surroundings. Instead, it internalizes their timeless qualities: solidity, silence, and permanence.
Peter Märkli, a protégé of Rudolf Olgiati and an architect who has long resisted the ephemeral tendencies of contemporary practice, approached the commission as a rare opportunity to construct an autonomous architectural statement. His admiration for Louis Kahn’s tectonic sensibility and Adolf Loos’ conceptual clarity resonates throughout the project. Still, the final result remains uniquely his own: a synthesis of archaic order and modern abstraction.
Architectural Language and Spatial Strategy
The museum comprises a sequence of connected rooms organized around a central longitudinal axis. Its spatial composition echoes that of a sacred path or a monastic procession. Visitors are not presented with a foyer or threshold; instead, they step directly into a compressed and shadowed space, prompting an immediate shift in perception. As one progresses, alternating widths, ceiling heights, and orientations create a rhythm of compression and release, tension and repose.
Materially, the building is constructed almost entirely of in-situ concrete. Its surfaces are untreated and unpainted, bearing the imprint of rough timber formwork. These textures not only reflect the construction process but also establish a tactile continuity with Josephsohn’s sculptures, which often retain the imprint of the hand and the roughness of their mold.
Natural light is sparingly introduced through narrow slits and clerestory apertures, creating chiaroscuro effects that animate both the architecture and the art. There is no artificial lighting, heating, or ventilation. Instead, the building relies on its mass and form to mediate climate and atmosphere. This decision, far from being an omission, is central to the spatial strategy. It compels a heightened sensory awareness, where every footstep, breath, and shadow acquires resonance.
La Congiunta Museum: Phenomenology and Experience
La Congiunta is not concerned with display in the museological sense. There is no signage, no didactics, no curatorial commentary. Instead, it orchestrates a phenomenological experience where the viewer’s encounter with the sculpture is choreographed by space, light, and material. The sculptures are not mounted or spotlighted but embedded within alcoves, standing in corners, or resting along the concrete floor. They exist within the same ontology as the building: rooted, weighty, silent.
In this way, the architecture does not frame the sculptures. It communes with them. The building becomes a vessel for reflection on art, time, and the physical presence of matter. Its austerity is not ascetic but profound, evoking emotional and cognitive responses through the barest of means. Visitors do not consume the space. They dwell in it.
There is a monastic quality to the experience, not in its religious overtones, but in its disciplined minimalism and contemplative atmosphere. The absence of distractions, visual, technological, or interpretive, results in an intensely focused engagement. The architecture dissolves into its function, making room for silence and stillness.
Critical Reception
Since its completion, La Congiunta has garnered reverence among architects and theorists, although it remains relatively unknown to the general public, a status that seems congruent with its ethos. The project is often cited in architectural pedagogy as a paradigmatic example of phenomenological design and as a counterpoint to the spectacle-driven architecture of the late 20th century. It aligns with the sensibilities of Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus Chapel and Kahn’s First Unitarian Church. Yet its scale and singular purpose give it a distilled intensity that is difficult to replicate.
Within Märkli’s broader body of work, La Congiunta holds a special place. It is perhaps his most radical statement, radical not in form but in its uncompromising commitment to architectural fundamentals. It reveals the power of mass, light, and sequence without recourse to ornament, technology, or style. It articulates a worldview: that architecture can and should stand apart from trends, mediating our relationship to art, landscape, and ourselves.
La Congiunta Museum Plans
La Congiunta Museum Image Gallery
About Peter Märkli
Peter Märkli is a Swiss architect renowned for his deeply introspective and materially grounded architectural approach, often drawing inspiration from classical proportions, vernacular traditions, and the work of artists such as Hans Josephsohn. A former student of Rudolf Olgiati and admirer of Louis Kahn, Märkli’s work is characterized by spatial clarity, tectonic honesty, and a resistance to stylistic trends, positioning him as a key figure in contemporary Swiss architecture.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: Hans Josephsohn
- Design Team: Peter Märkli in close collaboration with Hans Josephsohn
- Structural System: Reinforced in-situ cast concrete
