The Architect's House
Das Haus der Architektin
Thriller
Press
RADIO RABE
August 2023
Playing with Irritations
In a talk with Rabe radio from Bern about his new book, Mirko Beetschen reveals where his fascination for the supernatural, the Gothic and spooky comes from.
On a cold winter morning, he has a boat drop him off so he can explore the island estate all by himself, accompanied only by his two dogs. His initial enthusiasm for the architectural curiosities, however, soon turns into bafflement. What are all those rooms and labyrinthine corridors for? And why are the dogs acting so strangely? The longer he lingers on the island, the more uneasy he feels. When he injures himself and finds that all connections to the mainland are cut, he has no choice but to spend the night in the house alone with the dogs. Alone?
Island madness
Hidden away on an island in Lake Neuchâtel, inaccessible and abandoned for decades, lies the brutalist estate «Les Espoirs», breeding ground for countless legends. Here lived the meanwhile mostly forgotten architect Marie-Yolande Rabaut, who didn’t allow any reports on her house whatsoever. When Michael T. Ungermann is asked to visit and write about this modernist extravaganza as the first journalist ever, he can hardly believe his luck.
The few existing pictures show a building of ambiguous style, which finds its roots in → classical modernism, but heightens its vocabulary in an experimental way. Several extensions from the → late modernist period. Abandoned since 1972. Despite the canton’s attempts to repurchase the site, it remains privately owned and not accessible to the public.
From the Almanac of Swiss Architecture, 1994
Architect → Marie-Yolande Rabaut’s 1952 residence, situated on a remote island in a natural reserve of Lake Neuchâtel, is an architectural curiosity in its own right. The late modernist house, which Rabaut inhabited until her death in 1972, is as little documented as no other building of similar significance in Switzerland.
«Der Nebel um uns herum schien sich wieder zu verdichten, und es war, als ob sich die Holzbretter unter unseren Füssen langsam von der Insel lösten und wir auf einem einsamen Floss aus der Wirklichkeit hinaus und in ein uferloses Meer des Wahnsinns glitten, in dem es nur Kälte, Wasser und Dunkelheit gab, in dem Lichtund Hoffnung ferne Träume waren.»
«The mist around us seemed to get denser again,
and it was as if the planks under our feet came
from the island and slowly drifted away from reality
and into a shoreless sea of madness, in which
there was only cold and water and darkness and
in which light and hope were but distant dreams.»
