Collection

The S AM collection comprises the institutional archive, the digital education archive, several estates and a model collection as well as a library including a periodical archive about Swiss architecture.

S AM has also been a member of the Federation of German-Speaking Architecture Collections since 2016. In 2017, the museum signed a cooperation agreement with the three most important universities’ architecture archives of Switzerland: the gta Archives at ETH Zurich, the Archives de la construction moderne at EPF Lausanne, and the Archivio del Moderno dell’Accademia di architettura at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). These tertiary institutions constitute the driving force behind academic research on Swiss architectural history. As a private institution without a budget for purchases, the S AM has no financial or human resources devoted to collecting, so it sought another way to bring together various competencies. In March 2017, it signed a cooperation agreement with these three universities’ archives, the goal of which is the joint mediation of Swiss architecture in the form of exhibitions, publications and events. In 2020, this alliance will now allow the public to access its first joint project, along with drawings, plans and models that have never been seen together like this before: the exhibition ‘Beton’ (20/11/2021-24/4/2022) at the S AM and the publication ‘Building in Concrete: Swiss Works since 1883’ (publisher Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, ISBN 978-2-88915-353-4, approx. 450 pages). Other projects will follow.