Page 35 - Bulletin, Vol.78 No.2, June 2019

BUILDERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS: THE REACTION

OF GENEVA

A book that recounts the history of the construction of the international district and the
very local emotions that it aroused.

There are many books on architecture in
Geneva but up to now there had not been a
study of this parcel of its territory abandoned by
its inhabitants, the international district. This gap
has now been filled remarkably by the richly
illustrated book of Joelle Kuntz Genève
international, 100 ans d’architecture,
published by Slatkine.

It is of course about architecture and the author
recalls the heated debates that tore the
profession apart in the last century, with Geneva
at the center of the scene. But the book goes beyond that, recounting the intricate
dialogue exchanged between the city and the international organizations; fifteen
chapters to follow with amusement the history of the principal buildings.

Respect for the trees

Geneva was proud to have been chosen, in 1919, as the headquarters of the League of
Nations, and anxious to please but nevertheless reticent to the idea of its countryside
being turned upside down. Public opinion, that clandestine factor that hides round the
corner, very quickly imposed its sensibilities and codes: there was no question of
building upwards and the trees had of course to be preserved.

In the 1920s, just as at the beginning the 2000s, the defenders of the sequoias gave
many headaches to the International Labour Office (ILO) and the World Trade
Organization (WTO) when they were planning extensions, although the trees were
sometimes merely an excuse. In 1927, when the competition was launched for the
construction of the Palais des Nations, Geneva insisted on the “Latinity” of the Lake’s
shores and refused all modern concepts of Nordic and Germanic style.

As managers of the project, the international organizations accepted these constraints;
they already had sufficient problems with their construction plans, such as how to build
offices and at the same time realise the monuments demanded by the nations who were
paying for the work? How to be functional and at the same time represent an ideal? The
stakes were high, as was seen when the president of the World Health Organization
(WHO), during the inauguration of the new building in 1966, said that it had to be a
symbol of the hopes of the whole of humanity that one day the world would be without
maladies. Nothing less.

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