Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

SWI swissinfo.ch has left the building. That is, we’ve left Giacomettistrasse 1 in Bern where we’ve had our offices for decades. After two weeks working from home, we’ll be sending this briefing from our new offices in the centre of town.

But the office won’t be in a big skyscraper. The buildings in Bern are tiny compared to Roche’s latest tower in Basel. At 205 metres, Roche’s Bau, inaugurated today, is now the tallest building in Switzerland. More on this architectural wonder in today’s briefing.

Keystone

In the news: Calls mount for higher wages, Einstein’s Zurich ties and job cut rumours at Credit Suisse.

• Swiss trade unions are calling on employers to increase real wages by 4-5% in response to rising inflation and higher energy prices. This isn’t only necessary, says the union chief, but possible given the good state of the economy. This could face pushback though from employers who argue that they are still dealing with too much uncertainty as a result of the war in Ukraine.
• The original doctoral certificate belonging to Albert Einstein has returned to the University of Zurich thanks to a donation. The certificate took an interesting journey after 1906. A young student found it in the attic of an apartment where Einstein lived with his first wife. It was then sold at an auction in 2009 and resurfaced in New York in 2022.
• If rumours are true, about 5,000 people could be out of a job at Credit Suisse. Reuters reported that someone with direct knowledge of the matter had indicated that about one in ten positions at the second-largest Swiss bank could be slashed. This is all part of a cost-cutting drive and a transition phase the company is undergoing in the wake of several scandals that have led to costly legal fees.

Keystone / Georgios Kefalas

Are skyscrapers the future for Switzerland?

Swiss pharma firm Roche inaugurated its second white tower with the very creative name of “Building 2” today. At 205 metres, it is now the tallest building in Switzerland, surpassing its first tower which stands at 178 metres.

The towers are architecture marvels – white, sleek staircase-shaped towers that can be seen from nearly everywhere in Basel. While the buildings are surely modern, the skyscraper seems like something from a bygone era. In the age of flexible work, do we still need skyscrapers?

Yes, and no, says urban planning expert Sacha Menz in an interviewExternal link in Tages-Anzeiger. Switzerland has had a love-hate relationship with skyscrapers. And to start with most cantons define a “high-rise” as anything over 25 metres, which is miniature compared to most cities.

Menz says that there are plenty of good things about high rises, especially in cities where housing prices are going through the roof. She also disputes arguments that they are less energy efficient. But she agrees that the days of monofunctional high rises are over. “Without wanting to offend the pharmaceutical company: In principle, I would like us to not build purely office towers or purely residential towers,” she says.

© Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

Early but exciting discovery that could help people with Down’s Syndrome.

A French-Swiss research team appears to be on to something that could be a big deal for people with Down’s syndrome. A unique feature of the disorder is that cognitive abilities tend to decline after puberty. This prompted the researchers to look into the role of GnRH (a gonadotropin-releasing hormone), which is an essential hormone for sexual development, puberty and fertility.

In a small-scale trial, the researchers fitted seven men who have Down’s syndrome with a pump that provided a dose of GnRH every two hours for six months.

Six out of the seven men showed moderate cognitive improvements after the treatment, including in attention and being able to understand instructions, compared with a control group who were not given the hormone.

What does this all mean? The researchers say seven patients is hardly enough to draw extensive conclusions but they, and many other experts interviewed for this story in Heidi NewsExternal link, believe this could be a big deal. “I am really amazed. Many trials have stopped in mice with Down’s syndrome before even arriving in humans. It’s a pilot study on a small number but I find it extraordinary and extremely promising that it was possible and that there was a beneficial effect,” said Ariane Giacobino, a medical genetics specialist at the Geneva University Hospital.

Down’s syndrome has not been area of investment for pharmaceutical companies so the researchers are hoping they can find other sources of funding to bring the research to the next stage.