march-2011

FEATURES | ZURICH
WITH ITS IDYLLIC
lakeside setting, fl awless
public transport and
well-paid workforce, Zürich
is regularly named the best
place in the world to live.
Analysts comb through millions of
pieces of data on crime, employment,
green spaces and more, and consistently
fi nd Switzerland’s biggest city at the top
of the ratings.
All of which makes it sound very
boring. But it’s not. A formerly downat-heel
industrial area called Zürich
West – only a few blocks from the
quaint Old Town but divided from it by
the main railway line – has been turned
into a world capital of contemporary
art. Galleries started moving into
and around an old brewery building
called the Löwenbräu in the 1990s,
and now the area is buzzing with bars,
restaurants and desirable apartments.
The New York Times has compared
the area to East Berlin or London’s
Shoreditch, and as word spreads, Zürich
is becoming renowned as one of the
world’s great art cities.
The scene has grown organically
over the past 20 or so years, but it’s
about to receive a major boost thanks
to the renovation of the Löwenbräu,
which will add major new gallery
spaces and residential apartments
when it reopens in 2012. As Zürich
prepares to enter the next stage of its
artistic development, we caught up
with some of the city’s most important
gallery owners to fi nd out why the city
is becoming just as famous for its art
as it is for its banks.
80 | TRAVELLER | MARCH 11
SHOOTING
GALLERIES
THE REGENERATION
LEE CHESHIRE VÉRONIQUE HOEGGER
OF A RUN-DOWN
INDUSTRIAL AREA IS
TURNING ZURICH
INTO ONE OF THE
WORLD’S FOREMOST
CENTRES FOR
CONTEMPORARY ART