Hook, Line & Bunker - Switzerland

you from the 1880s landlocked Switzerland began building bunkers in strategic locations to protect from invasion a project heightened during and between both world wars at its height there were around 10,000 bunkers operated by the military but since the end of the Cold War many have been decommissioned some of these have provided Swiss entrepreneurs with a business opportunity like dill Tallis who took over an 18,000 square meter bunker in adding housing near lake lucerne built to house up to 2,000 people and known by codename k7 they were sold by the military in 2007 having been used most recently as a training facility del talus uses only a tiny slice of the bunker as a top security data center the bunker was built to withstand a twenty Megaton bomb and has only one working entrance the rest stands with theory abandon as an homage to Cold War paranoia further east and a former military site has had a more accessible refurb outside the town of flash a small local firm Atelier F has collaborated with the Department of Forestry to transform a cable car station that once serviced a series of bunkers in the flash' burg mountain into a small auditorium local larch wood was sourced by forestry apprentices who also helped in its construction but where the Swiss bunker obsession comes into full force is in its civilian protection from 1963 it became law that there must be a space for every citizen in a fallout shelter new buildings were constructed with shelters in basements and for those homes that could not be retrofit massive public bunkers were constructed the largest was built in lucerne completed in 1976 the Sonnenberg shelter was intended to house 20,000 people using two highway tunnels as dormitories and a seven-story underground building as a hospital command center and Penitentiary today it's still part of the city's emergency plan but now reduced to capacity of 2,000 costing around 200,000 euros annually to maintain the civilian bunker law was once repealed on the 9th of March 2011 but 48 hours later it was back in place after the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant to protect their citizens to house their military as a space for new business and even a push for domestic tourism the Swiss obsession with the bunker is far from over and perhaps the country's ultimate underground economy from Monaco in Switzerland I'm David Michel

Channel: Monocle Films

Views: 89,795

Rating: 4.6764045 out of 5

Keywords: Monocle (Magazine), Switzerland (Country), Shelters, Underground, Hidden, Bunker, Tunnel, Defence, Design (Industry), Affairs, Innovation, Attinghausen

Id: vUpJTlQvbhs

Length: 2min 41sec (161 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 30 2015