Swiss Review / April 2022 / No.2 view was magnificent and the flat was completely unoverlooked. It was strange, but we didn’t feel like we were stuck inside a housing project,” says this former accountant, originally from Porrentruy. Time passed, the children moved out and now Michèle and her husband are preparing to move into a house under socio-medical supervision. But they won’t be going far from Le Lignon. Genevan developer and architect, Georges Addor (1920-1982), head of this project which was originally inSTEPHANE HERZOG It was the year 1974. Michèle Finger remembers her arrival in Lignon, in the canton of Geneva. She was in the carwith themanwhowas to become her husband. The urban development stretched out before her: one kilometre in length, 2,780homes and 84 streets. “It was unimaginable, immense. I just couldn’t imagine a building so big,” she recalls. Once inside, Michèle felt reassured. “My partner was living in a four-room flat. It was well laid out and full of light. The tended to house up to 10,000 people, would have been delighted to hear Michèle’s words. “People’s happiness. This is the main concern for an architect building a complex of this size,” he stated in 1966 before RTS (TV channel in western Switzerland) cameras. “Once a person has understood that theywill have four neighbours around them, 15 floors above or below won’t change a thing,” explains Addor, scion of the canton’s real estate elite. “He was a left-winger in a Maserati,” says the architect Jean-Paul Jaccaud, when Switzerland’s biggest building wears its 60 years well Le Lignon’s central building measures over 1 km. It is the largest rental complex in Switzerland. There is a real quality of life in this neighbourhood of 6,500 inhabitants, but there are also certain tensions between older residents, newcomers and young adults. Higher, further, faster, more beautiful? In search of the somewhat different Swiss records. This edition: Switzerland’s biggest – and longest – residential building. 12 Report e tremes Swiss
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