Scattered throughout North America, small cities have been created over the past centuries that preserve the traditional architectural features and identity image of previous overseas villages. Cities such as Frankenmuth in Michigan, Solvang in California or New Glarus in Wisconsin founded respectively by immigrants from Germany, Denmark and Switzerland are enclaves imbued with what we can identify as German, Danish or Swiss.

The exhibition “Swissness Applied” – after being exhibited in Wisconsin, Switzerland and now also at the Yale Architecture Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut – explores the New Glarus as case study and highlights the export and subsequent appropriation of an architectural and cultural image of others and its consequences in terms of building regulations.

A section of the exibition consisting of a series of drawings, photographs and 24 models – some wooden or paper monochrome – reproduce existing buildings of New Glarus and details of technical construction rooms. The remaining 18 models, in the “It has as long as it has” section, reproduce fictitious building forms. Architetcure Office breaks down, reassembles and remixes building elements of Swiss architecture in the experimentation and construction of new and unexpected architectural images.