(G2)
11.12.2025
Dear second.garden,
Here's a letter that, since the end of May, has been a little lost among the notes of my phone, but sometimes lost letters find their way.
I'm on my way home from a residency in the Schweiz alley of Lumenzia. The lower area I lived in used to be a wetland, but now the water from the mountains runs through the sewer, and water canals are built beneath the streets and pathways.
Everywhere in the landscape of the valley, you see the small villages with clusters of sunburned wooden houses and barns. Scattered across the fields, some barns stand alone with wide stretches of meadow between them. Some are still in use, while others have been left behind. The round beams reveal the oldest barns, but most of them are mixed constructions. The open space between the beams let air flow through the buildings, traditionally keeping the storage of grass dry. But glimpsing through the gaps of some wooden barns, now the glass facades of luxury vacation homes sparkle. A house-within-a-house concept has begun to occupy the structures.
A law from the early 2010s, originally intended to protect permanent residents and the local building culture by limiting the construction of new holiday homes, has instead contributed to rising housing prices for existing houses and barns, making it more difficult for people to live permanently.
Rene Boer writes about the term Disneyfication, “referring to anything separated from its original context and made more palatable for commercial purposes” in his book Smooth City. Perhaps the management of this region, and the influence of tourism, is leaving this place with a smooth surface? There is something in this fairytale-like landscape that leaves out something else behind.
My work during the residency focused on some physical cracks in the buildings of the village of Peiden in Lumnazia. A small village that moves several centimeters each year, due to the movement of earth, linked to the increasingly rapid changes in the Alpine climate.
Best,
Anna Eglite
share: linkedin, instagram, facebook, x