Moléson-Village was born from the fertile imagination of a group of Fribourg residents who had a vision for developing the economy and tourism at the same time. The utopian idea of the 1960s to build a model village was eventually killed by controversy and financial difficulties. It began to take shape again in 1978, but in a much different form than originally imagined.
This epic story is just as much about tourism (the dream of a mountain resort) as it is about architecture (more than 150 plans, most of which never saw the light of day), economics (more than 20 million francs invested) and even sociology. The goal of this article is to summarise the facts related to the various stages of this adventure without distorting the issues involved.
Robert Boschung, the property developer of the ‘Vieux Chalet’ in Crésuz, had dreams of a restaurant on the summit of Moléson which would be linked to Epagny by cable car. He gathered together several influential Fribourg personalities who were enthusiastic about the idea of developing tourism in the canton. In November 1959, the initiative committee submitted an initial request for a concession to the Federal Department of Post and Railways for a cable car connecting Pringy to Plan-Francey with an intermediate station at La Chaux and a cable car from Plan-Francey to the summit of the Moléson.
In May 1961, the Grand Council of Fribourg accepted the motion of Pierre Morard, a deputy from Gruyère, and 60 co-signatories. It called for the construction of a cantonal route linking Pringy to La Chaux. It was to be four kilometres long, six metres wide and with a maximum slope of 10%, and would cost around seven million francs, three of which would be borne by the future station. Work began in March 1962 and was completed in July 1963.
A concession already granted to the municipality of Enney forced the developers to build a cable car, the famous Moléson buckets, connecting La Chaux to La Vudalla. Two ski lifts would complete the offer at a total cost of approximately 2.5 million. The three stations and the intermediate station, entrusted to the Lausanne architect Marc Wuarin, were available as a concrete base, wooden walls and multi-layered roof. The ski lifts became operational in December 1963, with the exception of the Plan-Francey – Moléson section, which was inaugurated the following winter.
William Dunkel, an eminent Zurich architect, retired teacher, trained at the German Bauhaus school, was entrusted with the development plan of the future holiday village to be built on the slopes of the Moléson. He wrote on this subject when the development plan was presented to the board of directors in January 1963. ‘An undeveloped area allows for a comprehensive and landscape-friendly development plan. (…) Losing this harmonious and well-balanced unity to the selfish and speculative fantasy of insufficient regulation would be a serious blow to this unique project. The author of this project preferred a layout organised in groups of constructions, separated by reforested bands to the false romanticism of the village and the modern insouciance.’
Combating speculation, not dispersing buildings and refusing all pastiche: these three principles led Dunkel to propose a development plan with strict regulations. The Board agreed with this vision of the project. The municipality remained the owner of the land, while the GMV Company was authorised to build various objects there. Investors negotiated with a single interlocutor who offered them area rights. The system was difficult to apply and worried more than one potential buyer.
Dunkel predicted a significant concentration of the built elements ‘resembling tightly packed Valais villages with reforestation between areas.’ In order to avoid the scattering of constructions, he concentrated the future village on the territory of La Chaux equipped for a capacity of 3,000 beds and places at the Crêt de la Ville and Plan-Francey in health or luxury resort establishments while at the Common, not visible from the plain, private constructions subject to more flexible rules were planned.
In the absence of a Fribourg model of a residential chalet, Dunkel advocated for ‘an architectural form that would not be in opposition to the site, but rather its natural extension.’ He chose local building materials: stone for foundations and pedestals, and wood for all living areas. It was based on a rectangle, dividing the volumes into terraces that follow the slope. The flat roof was the significant feature.
This development plan was distinguished by the cohesion of the subject and was a critical success, crowned by a model shown, in 1964, at the National Exhibition of Lausanne on the stand of the Heimatschutz.
In September 1964, the station director announced to the commune of Gruyères (report on an advertising campaign) that the station ‘received 260 applications in writing’. It was decided to speed up the process: drawing up neighbourhood plans, launching an architectural competition, developing the water supply system, constructing a sewage treatment plant, as well as the road leading to the future village and a large car park. However, nothing materialised.
In 1966, the Board of Directors relied on the four architects who won the competition and who selected from the Dunkel project only the concentration of buildings, individual houses and flat roofs, replacing local materials with Eternit, steel and concrete. In a consortium, in June 1966, they presented a set of 80 houses “served by oblique lifts on a slope and asphalt and heated horizontal roads for melting snow”! But nothing was built and the station struggled to honour interest and debt amortisation. In January 1967, the board of directors decided to build the first houses itself. They opted for a residence (Grevîre) of 18 apartments, and some holiday homes by the architects Tüscher and Hostettler, or about thirty apartments, from studios to five-room apartments. William Dunkel waxes lyrical about betrayal, the Heimatschutz abandoned ship and the Zurich architect was ousted in October 1967. Walter Tüscher became the official architect of Moléson-Village. He declared to La Gruyère on 8 April 1971 that his predecessor was ‘responsible for an excessively rigid development plan and a lack of integration in the tourist community’. He undertook to focus on collective housing.
Moléson-Village unleashed controversy from the presentation of the project in January 1963, dividing the press and its readers, the Heimatschutz and the Amis de Gruyères, the Fribourg and Swiss daily papers. The Fribourg newspapers – La Gruyère and La Liberté – initially displayed a certain enthusiasm for a project which the Bulle triweekly described on 26 January 1963 as ‘a major success’. Then they distanced themselves from what are ironically referred to in the region as the ‘molécubes’. The controversy focused around the cube, concrete and the flat roof.
For its part, the Swiss press praised the project. ‘Moléson-Village: Ein Experiment für Europa’ was the headline of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 21 February 1963. On the same day, the Tages Anzeiger proclaimed its genius and announced it as a national attraction. L’Express, on 5 March 1963, considered that the canton of Fribourg ‘suddenly shook the sedative dust that enveloped it and discovered vocations more dynamic than those of the traditional peasantry and religious confidence in the heavenly future’.
The Heimatschutz committed itself to the future village by presenting it as a model on its stand at the 1964 National Exhibition. Its architect, the Zurich-based Max Kopp, explained this in a press release in June 1963: ‘I believe that the question of flat roofs or roofs with two or more planes is of a secondary nature. In this place there is no former establishment that would impose the tone to which one must be held.’ Les Amis de Gruyères responded in a letter to the board of directors on 3 February 1963: ‘La Gruyère is not the stronghold of Heimatschutz or a cable car company. (…) If the GMV Company wants, as it claims based on the voice of its chairman, to create a test area of new architecture in our region, it can reverse its project. It can install its cubic buildings and stilts at the Common. In this place, visible only from the surrounding high ridges, the damage would be minimal.’ The Heimatschutz took its distance from the architectural competition and finally disavowed the station after the eviction of William Dunkel.
The difficulty of selling or renting the apartments built in Moléson-Village between 1967 and 1969 and the ever-increasing threat of bankruptcy were a serious concern for the Company, which, as early as 1969, began to look for investors, considering almost everything.
The station’s correspondence testifies to these wanderings. Examples: a Swedish group imagined a B&B-style hotel; a Lausanne group was interested in an apartment building and shops in the future shopping centre; an Italian group dreamed of a B&B-style hotel. There are some projects in the Company’s archives that were supposed to save the station. The plans are detailed; sometimes building permits had been requested and even after the tenders had been awarded. Florilège: construction by a French group of three six-storey buildings for 500 dwellings and a capacity of 3,000 beds (1969-71); installation for the Swiss Railway Association of three studio buildings (1970-75); project at the foot of the Vudalla by the Municipality of Lancy of a combined holiday camp with a military hospital of 500 beds; a hotel club of about a hundred beds of which the company archives retain several architectural proposals.
From 1975, the Company again changed policy, looking to abandon real estate to focus on ski lifts. And in 1976, La Migros seriously considered the possible acquisition of the entire tourist complex. Despite a drastic attempt at reorganisation – the creditors abandoned 90% of their claims and turned the rest into shares – the food giant abandoned Moléson to its fate.
On 7 October 1980, the Grand Council of Fribourg agreed to release the station from its commitments, amounting to 3.5 million francs for the Pringy-La Chaux cantonal road. The message accompanying the decree is explicit. “It is well known that the financial situation of the Company has evolved unfavourably from the outset. All financial years have been in deficit. (…) As the financial situation of the GMV company worsens from year to year, its responsible bodies have been constantly looking for remedial solutions. Finally, their efforts have recently culminated in a memorandum of understanding (…) 1. abandonment of road receivables; 2. reduction of capital from 3.1 million to 1.555 million; 3. resignation of the Board of Directors (…) From 1962 to 1980, Moléson invested a total of more than 20 million in mechanical installations, restaurants, infrastructure, equipment, buildings and furniture.”
In 1978, the Valais brothers Bernard and Philippe Micheloud bought 14,496 m2 of land and temporarily ensured the survival of the Company. In the process, they built 14 chalets and gradually took charge of the station’s destinies. In 1983, they centralised the management of ski lifts, restaurants, the administration and management office of the chalets and apartments. In five years, they managed to do what had been expected in Moléson-Village for twenty years: build about fifty chalets, a village with three apartment buildings and shops, a sports centre with tennis and mini-golf.
As soon as they arrived in Moléson, they wiped the slate of the past clean and with the local authorities they drafted a charter that defined what Moléson-Village would not be – ‘no to futurism that is already outdated as soon as it is constructed’ – and what Moléson-Village would be: ‘yes to a village of wooden chalets, built in harmony with nature, on a human scale.’
In 1988, the resort had 1,200 beds in chalets and apartments out of the 3,500 planned. Since then, Moléson has had to cope with the economic crisis, the renewal of its ski lift facilities and especially took a turn towards summer with the development of an astronomical observatory at Moléson and a traditional cheese dairy in an old chalet, as well as various summer sports activities.
