The gta Archive preserves original materials in the fields of architecture, architectural theory, local, regional and national planning, and garden architecture and landscape design, from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries.
Archival estates
The core holdings consist of over 350 archival bequests of major architects, planners, engineers, historians and theoreticians, covering the most significant positions explored in Swiss architecture culture over more than 150 years. Starting from the Gottfried Semper Archive, the estates include those of turn-of-the-century architects Karl Moser and Gustav Gull, Swiss pioneers of modern architecture Lux Guyer, Max Ernst Haefeli, Werner Moser, Rudolf Steiger and Flora Crawford-Steiger, Hans Hofmann, Alfred Roth, Otto Rudolf Salvisberg and Hans Schmidt; and postwar architects and engineers including Fritz Haller, Ernst Gisel, Otto Glaus, Rudolf Olgiati, Lisbeth Sachs, Albert Heinrich Steiner, Heinz Isler, Atelier 5, Trix and Robert Haussmann, and Esther and Rudolf Guyer, among many others. The gta Archive contains the paper estates of important historians and theoreticians including Sigfried Giedion and Carola Welcker Giedion, Claude Schnaidt, Stanislaus von Moos, and Martin Steinmann, and the architecture photography of Hans Finsler, Fritz Maurer, Walter Binder, and Heinrich Helfenstein among others.
Collections
The gta Archive also holds over 50 collections documenting, among others, the architecture teaching conducted at the ETH, ETH building projects and masterplans, the archive of the Federation of Swiss Architects (BSA), the historical archives of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA), the photography collection of the Schweizerischer Werkbund, and the NSL Archive (Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft/Network City and Landscape) of Swiss regional and national planning, garden and landscape architecture. Of great international significance is the collection of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (International Congresses of Modern Architecture, CIAM), based on the materials from the CIAM secretariat in Zurich, run by Sigfried Giedion, complemented by documents from numerous prominent CIAM protagonists all over the world.
NSL Archive
The NSL Archive was founded in 2000 when the Institute for Local, Regional and National Planning (ORL) was replaced by the Network City and Landscape (NSL), nowadays the Institute for Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS). Incorporated in the gta Archive in 2007, the NSL Archive holdings, focused on landscape architecture and regional planning in Switzerland, include the garden architects Theodor Froebel, Otto Froebel and Robert Froebel, furthermore Gustav Ammann, Peter Ammann, Eduard Neuenschwander and Dieter Kienast, together covering nearly 150 years of Swiss horticultural history. Large planning archives include the Hans Marti estate, holdings related to the reaching and research conducted at the ORL, NSL and currently LUS at ETH Zurich, and studies for the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) dating from the 1980s.