Essay: Furka Pass

Furka Pass

A closed hotel, nothing much to see – yet Jenny Holzer, Sean Connery, and Rem Koolhaas have all been here …

Text by Anneke Bokern
Photos by Miguel Loos
It barely looks like one, but this is an early Koolhaas. Back in 1988, Rem designed a new entrance and terrace for the Furka Hotel – four years before OMA got famous for the Kunsthal Rotterdam.
The weather is terrible. It’s freezing cold and rainy, the clouds hang low, and there’s snow in the valley. Bundled in an anorak, I stomp up a rocky slope, further into the mist. What the hell am I doing here?

I’m seeking art. My little expedition began at Hotel Furkablick, at the highest point of Furka Pass in the Swiss Alps, 2,436 meters above sea level. The description from only two pages from Rem Koolhaas’s infamous tome S, M, L, XL was all it took to lure me to this place at the end of the world. The pages describe the conversion of the Hotel Furkablick restaurant, which was conceptualized by Koolhaas in 1988. Not that I’m crazy about the early concept: much more exciting is the hotel itself, and its legendary, secluded location.
»What the hell

am I doing

here?«
In the year 1789, royal French geographer François Robert called Furka Pass “une horrible traversée.” In 1964 a car chase was filmed here for the movie Goldfinger, and in 1983 Marc Hostettler, a gallerist from Neuchâtel, began organizing an annual land art event in the Pass. Hostettler was the hotel owner who commissioned Koolhaas with the design. “He ran the art program as well as the hotel, apparently absent-mindedly oscillating between the two roles,” recalled Koolhaas. “When he invited three architects to a symposium, none came. A year later, when I was a tourist passing through, we discussed a “modernization”: a minimal intervention through which the hotel would receive a real restaurant, a kitchen, a dining room, an entrance, and a viewing platform, without changing any of the rest.” The reconstruction was completed in 1991. Shortly thereafter, the Land Art Festival breathed its last breath, and nothing else has been heard of the hotel since - until now.

This place has seen better times, as the tourism brochure and the old postcard with “Greetings from the Furka Pass” prove. In 1964, James Bond (Sean Connery) chased Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet) along the serpentines of the Furka Pass, also passing the Furka Hotel.
Today, most of the striped shutters are closed. Of the former balconies, only the wrought-iron balustrades remain.

According to the mustachioed man in the natty suit, nothing has changed in the rooms since the hotel’s opening in 1900.
We spiral up the Pass on a cloudy day. As the hotel finally comes into view, it seems deserted. The old building, jammed between the street and a slope, has certainly seen better days. Most of the striped shutters are closed, and all that remains of the former balconies are the wrought-iron balustrade grills, clinging to the walls. A steely, funnel-shaped portal, unmistakably one of Koolhaas’s interventions, forms the entrance to the restaurant. Surprisingly, it’s open. The only sign of human life in the low, rustic room is a mustachioed man in a sweater-vest, waiting for guests behind an excessively avant-garde concrete bar. He looks as if he’s been standing there for years. Outside, wafts of mist drift through the valley. It reminds me of The Shining. What a splendid place. I want to stay here.

When I ask for a room, the man explains that the hotel is closed. Actually, it’s more than closed: it’s a sealed time capsule. “Nothing has changed in the rooms since the hotel’s opening in the year 1900,” he says quietly. “They all remain in their original condition, with chamber pots and washbasins. Because the facilities are too old-fashioned, we haven’t received any star guests, and we therefore can’t charge enough money to make a profit from overnight stays. The Pass is only open three months of the year. And it’s as good as impossible to find employees who want to work up here.”
»It reminds me of
The Shining. What
a splendid place.«
It’s not entirely true that nothing has changed. Some of the artists whom Hostettler invited to his festival have left behind traces in and around the building. But many are so subtle that you hardly notice them – you really have to look closely: the white-and-green stripes on the shutters are works by Daniel Buren; Paul-Armand Gette wrote the elevation of “2430” on a window in the restaurant; Glen Baxter embellished the walls of room 35 with a mural. A map of the area, which you can buy at the bar, depicts the locations of all of the works that artists such as Richard Long, Roman Signer, Panamarenko, Per Kirkeby, and Lawrence Weiner have created over the years. “No, they aren’t all still there,” says the barman. “Nature has reconquered much of it. I certainly don’t know which ones can still be found. Not many people ask.”

Most of the works are gone, as quickly becomes apparent – they’re overgrown, weather-worn, or washed away. After spending a while, without success, trying to find the works that are supposed to be closer to the hotel, I decide upon another strategy; now I look for those most likely to have survived a decade and a half in an alpine climate, a series of “truisms” in four languages that Jenny Holzer engraved into some rocks in 1991. An hour later, I find myself on a little trail, high above the hotel. I scour the rocks for inscriptions and feel like a child on a scavenger hunt.

As it begins to drizzle, I gradually lose interest. Then I suddenly see it: “Halt Dein Leben im Fluss,” barely legible on a rock near a small brook. A step further is “Voyagez légèrement,” followed by “Humor befreit” and some other multilingual phrases spread across a radius of 200 meters. Until now, I had only known Holzer’s Truisms as LED light-displays in museums, but the lonely, rough landscape of Furka Pass lends them a very different effect. As rock inscriptions, they suddenly suggest an ironic version of the Ten Commandments.

The steel, funnily-shaped portal, unmistakably an element of Koolhaas' redesign, leads into the restaurant of this time-capsule.
»Boredom makes you
do crazy things.«
There is art everywhere but you have to look very closely: the striped window shutters are an artwork by Daniel Buren.
Back at the hotel, I warm myself up with a cup of tea, pleased with myself and my discoveries. That is, until I see a photo on the postcard stand of one of Holzer’s rocks, which I apparently missed. “Boredom makes you do crazy things,” it says. Sometimes that’s also true of art.
For adventurous art maniacs only: a series of Jenny Holzer's “truisms” that are engraved in stones spread along a trail high above the hotel. Most of the other artworks around the hotel have been “reconquered” by nature.