We have been pretty busy lately, so sorry for the lack of posts. Here’s one I’ve been saving for just such a day. Ready, and . . .  flashback to Switzerland . . .

We pass through this train station in Zürich nearly every day and have even gotten on/off the train from here. There was some construction work going on, and I as an architect was always walking around wearing my figurative architect hard hat (the white one, while holding a roll of drawings and pointing at something [thanks Ross!]). “What’s this going to be?” “That’s an unusual way to do it. That isn’t how we do it in America.” And generally looking at the big picture and trying to imagine what the final product will look like while only seeing the skeleton yet in place.

All the while looking at the architectural details, I didn’t generally look closely at the construction materials that I knew would not be part of the building once finished. This particular day I glanced out the window of the train while it was stopped at the platform and there was something new at the platform edge. Construction had proceeded to a new section and there, staring back at me, was a giant buttholz.

And not just a buttholz, but also a giant schalung.

These terms aren’t crazy if you know German, but to an English speaker they are not what you expect to see on a wall in any form other than a graffiti tag. “Buttholz” is a proprietary name, but Holz means wood and Schalung means formwork. This is a shuttering panel, similar to plywood but each ply is about 1/4″ thick.

So there you go, today you got to see a buttholz, a schalung, and learn some German along the way.

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