Building Bridges: The Swiss Language Border through the Lens

The project is dedicated to the spatial perception of the so-called “Röstigraben.” This is not understood as a political or administrative line, but as a hybrid space shaped by language, building culture, and everyday life between the German- and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. Here, the Röstigraben is not seen as a division but as a field of tension: a threshold, an overlap, a transition, and an entanglement.

In three selected locations – Biel/Bienne, Fribourg, and Delémont – we investigate these contact zones through photography. At the core of the project are photographic essays developed in an iterative dialogue between photography, urban research, and linguistic reflection. The focus is not on depiction, but on dialogue.

The photographs engage with the built environment and with situations of coexistence and friction. They address the spatial materiality of cultural coexistence – showing where it appears self-evident, where it provokes irritation, or where it is consciously staged. The photographic work is neither purely artistic nor exclusively analytical, but rather opens up a sensorial experience of the territory. It draws on fragments of reality to foster a critical engagement with the hybrid situations along Switzerland’s linguistic boundary, questioning zones of ambiguity, thresholds, tensions, overlaps, and forms of living together. Each selected image is carefully interpreted and set up for discussion.

The photographs will be shown in situ – that is, at the very places where they were taken – displayed on billboards in public space. These interventions bring the images back to the sites of their origin, creating an immediate reflection between image and reality, representation and environment. This establishes a direct dialogue between representation and reality, between viewer, image, and place.

To deepen this dialogue, the billboards will be accompanied by a QR code leading to a simple digital feedback platform. There, viewers can share their impressions: Where do they perceive the contact zones of linguistic overlap to begin? Where do they blur? What are their everyday experiences with multilingualism, spatial division, or connection? These responses will serve as the basis for a concluding public event in Fribourg, where image, place, language, and lived experience will be brought together in open discussion. The event is supported by the City Architect of Fribourg and by the Stiftung Baukultur Schweiz.

The project thus positions itself as a contribution to a critical engagement with a cultural space that shapes Switzerland – visible, yet often unspoken. It aims to foster a deeper reflection on sustainable building culture and on intercultural spaces of transition and coexistence.