Small country, big opportunities

RZ: When thinking about why architecture is booming in Switzerland, one key factor is the country’s combination of size and quality. Although small, Switzerland has an exceptionally high level of architectural practice, largely shaped by its schools—starting with ETH. Architects here are constantly engaging in discussion and reading, supported by a strong theoretical foundation that informs the wider discourse. Many of the topics we deal with professionally are already being explored and researched in these schools. This high level of engagement and education is, I believe, one of the main reasons for the remarkable density of young offices in Switzerland.

Second, I’d say we’ve had a construction boom. Maybe back in the 90s, architects didn’t really know what to do every day—they were more focused on theoretical topics. But over the past 15–20 years, there’s been so much to plan and build. That’s also a bit crazy: in such a small country, we have so many offices, but somehow all of them have enough work. And more keeps coming. I don’t know how long that will last—whether we’ll hit some kind of crisis, whether it’s economic or about costs or something else—but right now it’s very active.

The third factor is Switzerland’s unique competition culture. Many competitions are open—so you don’t need to be a licensed architect, or even a student, to participate. This gives people the opportunity to start their own office at a very early stage. That’s how it happened for us, seven years ago. Since then, we’ve seen so many colleagues start their own firms the same way—by winning or placing in a competition. Even an unbuilt project can be enough to launch something. At the same time, the standards have gotten really high in the past 10 years. You’re competing against great colleagues all the time, and projects keep getting more complex.

EM: I think part of that density is also due to population growth. More people means more architects, but also more people needing housing. So, more is being built. Construction is currently active. And maybe there’s also a generational shift. Today, there’s more influence coming from different directions, and I think people are more willing to take risks and start something of their own. There’s a different spirit, not just in Switzerland—probably everywhere. You get the sense that you can start your own business.

AA: And to add to what you were saying before—today, it’s also just easier to start. Not necessarily by winning a big competition or building a house right away. But in terms of resources, you don’t need much. You need a laptop, and maybe a kitchen table, and you can start your office. Compared to other professions, it’s less capital-intensive. If you're a carpenter, for example, you need a full workshop and tools. But as architects, at least in the beginning, it’s relatively accessible. 

From school to partners

RZ: We are three partners—Emanuel Moser, Alexander Athanas, and me, Rafael Zulauf. Alex and I have known each other since we were children—we're both from Baden. Emanuel worked for about 12 years at our partner office, Zulauf & Schmidlin Architekten, which shares the same office here. He worked as a project leader, especially on the construction side. Alex, Ole Bühlmann (who left our office last year), and I are the founding partners of our collective, Marudo. 

Honestly, we didn’t open our own office with a long-term plan—it happened in a completely different way. We started by entering open competitions, and it all grew organically. I did some with other colleagues, and sometimes I teamed up with Alex—for example, during our time at ETH, we entered a small competition for a coffee shop. Later, we decided to try an open competition in Solothurn, in north-west Switzerland—and surprisingly, we won. At the time, Ole and Alex were working in other offices in Zurich, and I was still a student at ETH. You always dream of winning a competition—but you also have to be ready for what comes next if you do. Luckily, we could start working and planning right away—mainly thanks to our partner office, who had much more experience in planning and cost management. From day one, we collaborated with Zulauf & Schmidlin Architekten. This first project, a school we completed three years ago now is the reason we’re here today. 

It was an open competition with more than 70 entries. Our winning proposal was a two-story building for a kindergarten and daycare school. One key move was keeping the access and stairs outside the building, which gave us a smaller economic volume. The school building sits within an existing campus, alongside a larger structure from the 1990s—typical of many Swiss schools, especially in Solothurn, with their clear, modern concrete-and-steel typologies. With our project, we wanted to stay within that lineage—those clear architectural ideas—but bring them into a new era. It was about typology and the organisation of outdoor areas, but also about flexibility: designing a school building that can adapt to the ways we teach and learn today. 

We designed a visible concrete frame and inserted rooms of different sizes within it. The concrete structure became the main defining element of the project. And interestingly, when the building was completed two years ago, it wasn’t used immediately by the kindergarten. Another primary school building in Solothurn wasn’t finished on time, so they used ours temporarily. And that showed us that the flexibility worked—it was the right way to build. Looking back, I think it was the typology, the fundamental concept, and the clarity of the materials and structure that were the key reasons we won the competition.

Ideas above all

AA: When we look at the school building, it really shows our approach to design. It’s based on strong grids and axes, and I think that’s something we try to apply in most of our projects: developing a system, a kind of logic behind the structure and the arrangement of rooms. Even today, we’d probably build the school in the same way. This underlying logic is a key part of our approach. In recent years, we’ve also begun working more with wood, considering timber construction from the very start of a project.

RZ: I’d say, even after seven years—and after doing housing projects and renovations—that the school building is still the most “radical”. That’s the great thing about open competitions: they give you space to propose and experiment with typologies and ideas. With the Solothurn school, we were able to bring the first idea—literally the first sketch—all the way through planning and construction over three years. We actually built what we originally envisioned. 

We were very lucky. Our generation faces many pressing issues—reuse, timber construction, energy, CO₂ reduction—all of which are now part of our reality. Just a few years ago, when we won that competition, these topics weren’t as prominent. Today, you have to address them even at the early stages of open competitions. But ultimately, it’s still the idea, the typology, and the urban design that matter most—that’s what you really have to answer. At the same time, it’s becoming more challenging to maintain a clear vision because you have to respond to so many additional concerns.

EM: Right, sometimes even in competitions, the amount of material you have to submit is huge. It’s not just about ideas or drawings—you almost have to present a full project.

RZ: But in the end, the best project wins. Not necessarily the one that checks every sustainability box, but the one with the best urban design or strongest idea. Of course, all these other issues are important. But we hope—and we’ve seen—that strong concepts still win. It’s just harder now to keep the idea clear when you’re trying to tick all the boxes.

An evolving Kollektiv

AA: At the time we entered that competition, we weren’t really an office—just a group of friends working together. That’s when we came up with the name Kollektiv Marudo. Today, we’ve become a proper office, a classical company with owners and salaried employees. As a team, we’re able to manage the entire process—from design through to construction.

RZ: We’re still very happy with our name. And I’d say—we’re not the only architecture office today without individual names in the title. Our generation doesn’t necessarily see ourselves as the “authors” of buildings. You don’t walk through a city and say, “That’s a Kollektiv Marudo building.” We want our projects to engage with other topics—political, social, environmental. So, it’s good that our names aren’t in the title. The “collective” part doesn’t have a deep political meaning—we just see ourselves as a group. We’re 12 people now, mostly architects around the same age as us. The individual isn’t the focus.

AA: The way we are organised has certainly been influenced by our partner office, who’ve been working in this way for the past 30 years. When we won the competition in Solothurn, the city’s CEO said: “You need to establish a company now. You also need a construction management office to help with costs and execution.” So we suggested our partner office, who are in the same building. It just made sense—they are experienced, we’re close, and we could plan the whole project together, from start to finish, with all the necessary expertise. 

We saw a lot of potential in this model of practice. We’re very engaged with the construction side and cost management, which allows us to control projects from the very beginning. We understand where costs might rise and where savings are possible without compromising design or sustainability, giving us more control over the details. Working with separate partners can mean losing oversight, as they may focus only on their part of the project. Architecture isn’t just design for competitions—it’s far more complex, and we’re interested in all aspects of the discipline: competitions, technical planning, cost management, site supervision. 

RZ: We enjoy working across all these areas, that’s what makes the profession interesting. We’re entering bigger competitions now. If we win, that would be the next transformation for our office. And that’s the crazy part—we’re not following a strict plan for where we’ll be in two or three years. We talk about it sometimes, but honestly, if we weren’t open to evolving as an office, we wouldn’t be doing these competitions.

Rethinking density

AA: Thinking of examples, one interesting project worth mentioning is Anemonenstrasse, designed for a family with four children and a spacious garden. The family felt that using so much space was no longer appropriate and wanted to live more densely while retaining the benefits of a single-family home. Their idea was to densify the parcel by adding two more families, while keeping part of the existing house, the garden, and their own terrace. When we get calls like this, we usually treat them a bit like an internal competition. We take two or three months to work on it and then present a concept to the client. In this case, they were surprised—we didn’t do what they expected. But we had tried to check off all their needs. That’s how this very unusual shape emerged: three houses, each with different facades and terraces. 

They all share one entrance but split off into separate homes. There are also community spaces in the basement for home office use or hosting guests, which allowed us to reduce the size of the individual flats. They also wanted to add one more flat on top of their existing house. So in the end, it’s quite a complex structure, but I think it’s a good answer—not tearing everything down to build a big block. It keeps the small-scale typology of the neighbourhood and avoids creating a large wall with lots of windows. Right now, six people live there. With two more families—say, each with two kids—and the extra flat, there will probably be about 15 people living on the same plot. 

RZ: A similar project is Wohnen am Hang—“Living on the Slope”—our second built project after the school in Solothurn. The situation was similar: a plot with a single-family house, where the goal was to increase density. The family still lives on the site, now in one of six new flats, and wanted to share their land with others. The plot is a typical Swiss slope site, offering beautiful views, but such sites usually host terraced concrete buildings that often overheat. We asked ourselves: Can we do this in timber? Can we reduce CO₂ emissions while maintaining quality? The answer was yes. The volumes shift horizontally and vertically, giving each unit its own private outdoor space. Even the roofs—often a challenge in concrete terraced buildings—were reimagined in collaboration with our landscape architecture studio, MØFA, incorporating green roofs to reduce heat gain. 

This was our office’s first project in timber. So it was a learning process. And this raises a big question: should we always build in timber instead of concrete? We need to consider all aspects—costs, durability, carbon—and find the right balance. This kind of project sits in the middle scale: not small transformations, not massive urban planning. And that’s where we think we can contribute the most—finding smart answers to densification in existing housing areas. 

Pushing boundaries through competitions

RZ: We are currently working on Future Liebegg: Conversion and Expansion of the Liebegg Agricultural Center campus, a project won through the Planerwahlverfahren, a competition format focused on strategic ideas rather than detailed construction plans. The brief called for new school spaces, offices, and a student dormitory, alongside the adaptation of existing structures and the design of a high-tech cowshed for research. Developed in collaboration with Schneider & Schneider Architects, the project is large and politically significant for the canton of Aargau, involving many stakeholders. Over the next four to five years, we will transform the campus, a unique site far from any urban area and accessible only by car, bringing together many of the themes central to our practice. 

We’re not politicians, but we are architects. One of our goals is to explore solutions that engage with political topics—finding approaches that go beyond the rules we’re given. That’s what makes our job so rewarding: using different methods to spark discussions with many people about the future—the built environment we want to inhabit. Our focus is on actual projects, with the hope of generating ideas and solutions that offer more than just compliance with the existing framework.

EM: Rules sometimes take unexpected turns. The regulations are getting more and more complex—not just in Switzerland but all over Europe. We have to think carefully about what we really need and how to reduce CO₂ by using fewer materials. This is also political, and it needs attention. But it’s really difficult, because there’s also a lot of lobbying and pressure on politicians from the economy. 

AA: That’s why larger-scale projects like this are particularly interesting—you can push the limits because you have more influence. With a small kindergarten, for example, town regulations might restrict you—you can’t build higher. But in a major competition, your contributions can have a much broader impact, which is only possible at this scale.

RZ: We can’t emphasise enough that competitions in Switzerland—maybe uniquely—are the perfect platform to discuss and find answers to political topics. Our office enters many competitions because we want to be active in that process. Competing with colleagues means engaging in a debate about projects and ideas. Even if we don’t win every competition, it’s an active statement of our office’s thinking and commitment to development.