Peter Langenegger

«Why do you know so much?» Peter Langenegger was asked some time ago by a little boy after one of his village tours. He replied: «Always stay curious; you must always want to know something!» It is not known whether the boy understood the deeper meaning behind this, but at least his parents were beaming and thought it was the perfect answer. Curiosity is something that has accompanied Peter his whole life and that he tries to pass on to other people. His father had a great influence on his attitude to life. His mother, who experienced the Second World War at first hand, instilled in him a respect for people and a love for his neighbour.

For Peter, who grew up in the Surselva region, the seven years at the Disentis monastery school with type A school-leaving certificate and thus Latin and Greek were also formative – not so much the languages themselves, but rather the culture, art, architecture, history and philosophy associated with them. He then went on to study architecture for four semesters at ETH Zurich and five semesters of evening classes at the then HTA Chur. During the day he worked in an architectural office and came across a catalogue of the ETH exhibition by architect Rudolf Olgiati from Flims. Peter was immediately so fascinated by it that three years later he applied to Olgiati and got the job. He describes his time there as a kind of visual school. Olgiati developed his «visual logic» and recognised significant, consistent design principles in the original Engadine building culture, that of classical Greece and the modernism of Le Corbusier. A sign that Peter did not attach much importance to at the time: in one of Olgiati's rooms hung a large, old picture of Scuol Plaz with the Lower Engadin Museum in the background. As much as his time there meant to him, it came to an end after just nine months due to a lack of commissions, but his friendship with him did not. So after a year at the largest architectural firm in Graubünden at the time, his further path finally led him to Schimun Denoth's architectural firm in Scuol.

After a good working relationship for eleven years, Peter became self-employed as an architect in 1994. In Disentis, he secured a major project for a 9,000 m2 resort with the aim of providing warm beds, together with the largest regional energy company. He also favoured compact construction, car-free living, solar energy and modern Graubünden architecture. Due to laborious local planning revisions, construction could only begin in 2003. But then came the bombshell: an energy company from Graubünden took over the regional company, but was not interested in solar energy but in coal and gas – the final straw for the project. Today, only one of the ten planned buildings stands. Peter lost his job, a lot of money and a lot of motivation for architectural tasks. It was a major turning point in his life. Fortunately, he was able to regain what he had lost in another form. He still works as a self-employed architect during his retirement. But after the end of the major project, he had to find a job outside the industry. He found this at Scuol Tourism.

He had a great time at the tourism organisation, where Peter retired in 2017. He was able to put his knowledge of foreign languages and the region to ideal use. He knows almost every stone in the area, as he often went on hiking excursions with his family. He was particularly fond of S-charl with its side valleys and peaks, offering fantastic excursion destinations, especially with children. But he also appreciates Vnà and Raschvella, for example, because of their unspoilt nature. In addition to the Engadin's nature and mountains, Peter is also fascinated by its architectural culture. Between Maloja and Martina, not a single Engadin house looks the same and an Engadin village offers an exciting combination of individuality and community with the public squares. In contrast, modern construction methods only create boring distances between buildings. He will never give a guided tour of the new Scuol village above the bypass road, as it is too boring and offers nothing to talk about.

Scuol's old village centre, on the other hand, is interesting for a guided tour. Even today, Peter is often part of the weekly village tour, which he helped to develop around 20 years ago along with other holiday tips. The church tour was added a little later. Both end with a tour and aperitif at the Museum d'Engiadina Bassa. This makes them particularly valuable, as they reveal the authentic Engadin living and working culture with its unique sense of beauty. Some people travel here every year just for this reason. They are not the only ones who always have an extremely positive reaction to the guided tours and the museum. It is something very special that cannot be found anywhere else. There is also no fixed end to the guided tours, as the aperitif in particular gives rise to exciting Q&A sessions.

Peter knows the Lower Engadin Museum, categorised as a museum of regional importance, like the back of his hand, having been president of its museum association for several years and also a board member of the umbrella organisation Museums Graubünden. His first official act was to read the statutes of the museum's founders from 1956, which state that the museum should not only deal with the past, but also with the present and the future. To this day, Peter and the association take this guiding principle very seriously and organise the permanent and usually annually changing special exhibitions accordingly. Peter is proud of the new interactive table with touchscreen, which was acquired in 2024 and allows up to four people to learn about the history of the Lower Engadin at the same time.

With Rudolf Olgiati, Peter learnt what is always part of a building: the combination of rationality, functionality and aesthetics. As an architect, you have to be able to recognise and work out visual rules, i.e. always be aware of the meaning and effect of colours and shapes on the human eye. Every colour contains a certain amount of black, and the darker something is coloured, the more it disappears visually. You can play with this and emphasise the important and make the unimportant disappear. Geometric shapes that stand out from the organic environment also support this. This is particularly important for something as important as building a house, which you only do once in a lifetime. The Engadin houses, which used to be predominantly whitewashed, are also based on this. In old explorers' and travellers' reports, it is mentioned that the Engadin villages looked like a Greek island settlement. With this in mind, Peter regularly scrutinises building applications in terms of design and aesthetics as an additional office on the Scuol building commission during his «retirement». It goes without saying that Peter is as curious as ever about what awaits him there and on future guided tours.

Text: Roger Kreienbühl

Pictures: Michelle Zbinden, Dominik Täuber