Alphonse Laverrière, son of French parents and naturalized in Switzerland in 1911, was a Swiss architect who studied from 1887-90 at the École des Beaux Arts at Genève and up to 1892 at Paris. He then worked in Lausanne with Eugène-Édouard Monod until 1915, and together they won the gold medal in 1912 Olympic Architecture for their Building Plan of a Modern Stadium. They had already participated in an IOC-sponsored architectural competition in Paris in 1911 and won the first prize with a respective design. The “Terrain of a Modern Olympia” was planned for the Bay of Boiron, west of Monod’s birthplace Morges on Lake Geneva. The project consisted of two parts: one for field sports and one for water sports. The former included a stadium, a football field, and tennis courts; while the latter consisted of swimming pools, a marina, and a regatta course. The entire complex was complemented by a road of glory. Laverrière and Monod became friends with Pierre de Coubertin and followers of the Olympic Movement. They developed a theory for mutual inspiration of art and sport. The stadium was intended not only as the venue for sporting events, but also a stage for artistic and aesthetic performances. Over the next few years, they developed a second Olympic project for Vidy, a district of Lausanne.
Laverrière mostly designed and built villas, banking and factory buildings but also bridges. He was also involved in interior design and furniture design. His best known buildings were the Reformation Memorial at Genève, the Railway Station at Lausanne, the cemetery “Bois-de-Vaux” at Montoie / Bourdonnette, the Bel-Air tower, the Chauderon bridge and the Botanic Garden. He constructed the Zenith Watch Factory in Zürich from 1917-26. Between 1929-42 he was professor of theoretical architecture at the ETH Zürich. In 1913 he helped found “L’Œuvre”, which published an identically named newspaper and was considered as a francophone equivalent to the Deutscher Werkbund. Laverrière was also a member of the Swiss Engineer and Architecture Federation and of the Bund Schweizer Architekten. In 1924, he was a member of the jury for architecture at the Paris Olympics.
Switzerland