The Furka Pass, which is up to 2431 meters in altitude, lies at the eastern end of the Valais canton in the Swiss Alps and winds its way up the mountain in tight hairpin curves.
At its probably most spectacular part, the road almost seems to touch the adjacent Rhône glacier, and towards the west, the most magnificent Alpine panoramas compete with each other. It was here – in the second hairpin curve – that Josef Seiler opened the legendary Hotel Belvédère in 1883. The longitudinal, strong-walled building represents an architectural, a typological exception: where else would someone have dared to create a place of refuge, of rest, of contemplation, which is constantly surrounded by traffic of hikers, cyclists and cars – and thereby bathed in movement?
In the framework of the B4 project, we will explore this apparent paradox by designing our own accommodation in a hairpin curve of the Furka Pass or the nearby Grimsel Pass.