The Museum's gardens

Summer is all about spending time in the garden. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum is embracing the great outdoors too, as it continues its transformation into a hub serving the local community. With The Museum’s Gardens, works by more than 100 architecture students from the ALICE laboratory at EPFL will go on display in the Museum’s gardens and public areas. The eight wooden installations will give families, employees, local residents and passers-by a chance to explore and experience the site in a different light. Please join us!

How can the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum transform into an open, welcoming community hub at the heart of Geneva’s international district? How can the site better cater to a wider audience? And how can the Museum become a place where people stop and spend time, instead of simply passing through? These questions were the genesis of a collaboration with EPFL’s Design Studio on the Conception of Space (ALICE), a project that takes a fresh look at the Museum’s public spaces, both indoors and outdoors. The result is a series of full-scale installations – designed and built by 110 budding architects – that offer a new way to experience the Museum.

The Museum’s Gardens is the latest in a long line of collaborations with academic institutions, underscoring the Museum’s commitment to providing opportunities for young talent. The structures are testament to the approach championed by the ALICE lab: designing public spaces for everyday life using a time-served method that prompts students to consider how buildings interact with the landscape, soil, topography and vegetation in order to better understand their impact on the environment.

The Museum’s Gardens follows previous ALICE lab projects in and around Geneva (in Evian, La Jonction and Onex). This time around, the chosen site sits firmly within the city’s international district – an area experiencing rapid change – with the Museum serving as an open-air laboratory.