Werner Tschudy, a former elementary school teacher, born 1929 in Glarus, was best known for building a 9.5 m² relief of Switzerland. An admirer of the beauty of Swiss landscapes, he traveled to every single one of the over 2700 municipalites of Switzerland by foot over the time span of 13 years, collecting a postmark in each one of them as proof. During this time he first built a 1:100,000 relief of the Upper Valais with his sons. In 1967 he decided to extend his work to cover the entirety of Switzerland. He used a chipboard as the foundation and layered 2 mm thick cardboard layers on top of each other, creating mountains. The Mont Blanc consists of 48 layers, accumulating 10 cm of height. He used plaster to create the final hill shapes. He spent 15,000 hours on the monumental 600 kg “Relief Schweiz”, completing it in 1991, the 700 year anniversary of Switzerland.

In 1993, the “Relief Schweiz” was shown at the Expo ’93 in South Korea. He later donated his work the City of Zürich. In 2006 it was moved to the elementary school “Im Birch” in Oerlikon, Zürich, much to the satisfaction of the former teacher Tschudy.

[1] Werner Tschudy – Reliefbauer. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 28.09.2007.