gta Archives
Holdings
Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli, Development of the old Tonhalle area (today: Sechseläutenplatz) with artists' house against the Utoquai, Zurich, 1895 (gta Archiv / ETH Zurich)
gta Archives
The archives of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta Archives) essentially consists of personal papers of contemporary individuals, posthumous papers and various collections. Along with materials on many renowned and important architects, the most important components of the archives include: the nineteenth century, with the Semper Archive and Semper’s circle; the turn of the century (Karl Moser, Gustav Gull, and others) and comprehensive and prestigious materials from Swiss pioneers of modern architecture such as Hans Hofmann, Alfred Roth, Otto Rudolf Salvisberg and Hans Schmidt.
The gta Archives also holds the CIAM Archive, with complete coverage of all conferences of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne before and after 1945, as well as the posthumous papers of Sigfried Giedion, the important art historian and secretary-general of CIAM. New acquisitions in recent years now increasingly involve the archives of architects who were active in the second half of the twentieth century or are still active today (Fritz Haller, Ernst Gisel, Otto Glaus, Rudolf Olgiati, Lisbeth Sachs, Albert Heinrich Steiner, and others). In addition to posthumous papers, the collection of plans includes more than 3,000 individual plans, a collection of photos and images, and some 35,000 document items.
NSL Archive
The NSL Archive, which has been part of the gta Archives since 2007, was founded in 2000/01 when the Institute for Local, Regional and National Planning (ORL) was replaced by the Network City and Landscape (NSL). The NSL Archive initially served as a holding-place for stray documents from the dissolved ORL that still needed to be preserved for research purposes. Large-scale doctoral-thesis projects from the Institute for Landscape Architecture and associated posthumous papers were able to find a home or a refuge in the new archive.
Holdings relevant to landscape architecture and regional planning in Switzerland are included in the NSL Archive. A special focus of these holdings is the dynasty of garden architects represented by Theodor Froebel, Otto Froebel and Robert Froebel, furthermore Gustav Ammann, Peter Ammann, Eduard Neuenschwander and Dieter Kienast, together covering nearly 150 years of Swiss horticultural history. Large planning archives are present in the form of the posthumous papers of Hans Marti, holdings of the Institute of Local, Regional and National Planning (ORL) at ETH Zurich and the study for the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) dating from the 1980s.
Descriptions of the individual holdings, including details of the available materials in the gta Archives and a selected bibliography, are currently being prepared. Bequests and collections for which texts in German are already available are marked in the respective inventory lists by [↓] after the entry.
