On Common Ground

"On Common Ground" is a photographic history of spatial development in post-war Switzerland illustrated through 250 images with complementing essays. The development of settlements is documented by the idealised examples of Schlieren, which grew from an agricultural village to an industrial town and eventually to a cluster of service firms and residential suburbs of Zurich, and the Upper Engadine, the world famous mountain resort around St. Moritz in the Canton of Grisons. The authors have put together a vast collection of photographs found in archives of all sorts: local government offices, building companies, local and national newspapers, publishers of postcards, cultural heritage societies and amateur photographers. Such images have rarely been collected and analysed systematically. "On Common Ground" presents these pictures in a double-track, chronological sequence: the top part of each page shows Schlieren, the Upper Engadine takes the bottom half. The concept reveals manifold references, discrepancies and parallels between the two places. It makes traceable the passing of time and all the changes it imposes at times synchronically, in some periods at a different pace in each place. Some developments unfold at great speed in one place and stemmed in the other. Text in English and German.