1965 Natural History Museum Park St. Gallen

Location:
St. Gallen, Switzerland

Project Phases:
Competition 2009, 1st Prize; Realization 2017 – 2018

Client:
Building Department of St. Gallen

Landscape Design:
Competition Robin Winogrond;
Detailed Design and Implementation by Studio Vulkan

Architecture:
Armon Semadeni Architekten in collaboration with Meier Hug Architekten

Photography:
Das Bild/Judith Stadler, J. C. Jossen, Studio Vulkan, Daniela Valentini

Details:

• [concrete]
• [park]
• [vegetation]

A Staged Landscape of Natural-Cultural Contrasts

The park of the Natural History Museum in St. Gallen presents a carefully staged image of a Swiss landscape in transition – a place where infrastructure, urban edge, and pastoral idyll converge. Situated atop a highway tunnel and surrounded by sports facilities, residential developments, and arterial roads, the park explores natural history within the tension between artificial naturalness and natural artificiality.

Framed by a grove of hornbeams and underplanted with ferns and perennials, the planting scheme is expanded by exotic hydrangeas, which, in contrast to the predominantly native flora, intensify the paradox of the site. Monumental stepping stones serve as poetic-scientific exhibits in the open space – engraved with quotations, geological terms, fossils, and glacial erratics, they narrate the deep timescales and transformative processes of Earth’s history. These elements evoke curiosity, imagination, and reflection.

Artificial concrete is juxtaposed with natural “Nagelfluh” (conglomerate rock concrete). While the former bears the imprint of human fabrication, the latter retains its unrefined geological texture. The ground surface is finished with a greenish sandstone native to Eastern Switzerland, which, together with a natural gravel layer, provides a textured stage for the site’s artifacts.

The park is publicly accessible, yet walking on coarse gravel requires attentiveness, fostering an embodied engagement with the terrain – a subtle reminder of the human need to adapt to natural conditions. Three major geological epochs that shaped Eastern Switzerland are made spatially and narratively legible. Inscriptions such as “Bahamas” and fossil remains recall that St. Gallen was once part of a tropical ocean. Colorful erratic boulders bear witness to the movement of Ice Age glaciers.

Positioned between church and museum, the park also mediates between religion and science. Quotations from the Bible, Charles Darwin, and Max Planck inscribed in stone open a contemplative dialogue on diverse cosmological narratives – an invitation to reflect in a quiet and layered environment.

This narrative continues in front of the museum, where ginkgos and larches are planted, each representing biological and geological anomalies. The ginkgo, often considered the world’s oldest tree, resembles a deciduous species yet is classified as a conifer. The larch, a conifer, loses its needles in winter. Together, they express contrasting traits that, through their seasonal color shifts, become living symbols of the richness and complexity of natural history.