All hail the provincial European architect! From the Atlantic to the Bosporus, in cities large and small, thousands of modestly sized regional firms regularly churn out work of unobtrusive excellence, drawing their sustenance from the rich cultural soil of the Old World. GeninascaDelefortrie Architects is one such office, and one of the more accomplished: since 1995, the partnership of Lauren Geninasca and Bernard Delefortrie has executed dozens of high-quality projects, most of them in and around their home base of Neuchâtel in western Switzerland. Singular/Plural is a new monograph chronicling the practice’s work.

Private home, Chabrey, 2005-2006, which is more of a wooden sculpture that fits in with the topography of orchards, sheds, and barns.

It’s an appropriately regional affair. Published by Swiss house Birkhauser, edited by Lucerne-based historian Alberto Alessi, and featuring essays from an assortment of alpine academics, the book is as much a statement on the Swiss architectural establishment as it is on its nominal subjects. The architects themselves are paragons of the national cult of reasonableness, and their every project, as they put it, speaks to their belief in “architecture as a civic contribution.”

Footbridge over the Areuse, Gorges del'Areuse, 2002. The bridge is curved to better resonate with the river landscape, blending seamlessly into the surrounding environment while remaining highly visible.

The work supports that claim. La Maladiere (2007), the firm’s sports complex for their hometown, is a rigorously expressed, four-square stadium, lacking any frills save for a livid-red grandstand backed by a ribbed, translucent screen. A parish house completed in 2006 for the community of Saint-Blaise is topped in a green roof that finally does the phrase justice, making the building—as seen from above—really appear to be of a piece with the ground around it. In both structures, as in a number of reserved and thoughtful residential and commercial projects, Geninasca Delefortrie expresses a commitment to efficiency softened by a sense of humanity.

Cover of Singular/Plural. Publisher: Birkhauser.

Orson Welles got in a famous dig at the Swiss in The Third Man: “Five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” There’s something to be said for that critique; but on the other hand, what’s wrong with cuckoo clocks? It’s hard not to admire practices such as these, the kind whose designs are never too slow, never too fast, and out of which a little surprise occasionally pops.

Geninasca Delefortrie Architects
Title image: Footbridge over the Areuse, Gorges de l'Areuse, 2002 (detail).