Civil Engineering and the Development of Sport and Leisure in Swiss Cities (1900-1950)

The impact of engineers and architects on the development of sport is now well known. Many researchers have pointed out how they promoted this activity in a historical perspective. Besides being good sportsmen themselves, they created clubs, organised competitions, financed activities, recruited new...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of the history of sport 2012-09, Vol.29 (14), p.2067-2083
Main Author: Tissot, Laurent
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
Architects
Architecture
Cities
Civil engineering
Clubs
Competition
Engineering
Historical Development
Leisure
Perspective
Professional sports
Promotion
Sports
Sports (history)
Switzerland
Twentieth Century
urbanisation
Urbanization
Vision
Wellness
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Summary:The impact of engineers and architects on the development of sport is now well known. Many researchers have pointed out how they promoted this activity in a historical perspective. Besides being good sportsmen themselves, they created clubs, organised competitions, financed activities, recruited new adherents, etc. But less known is the way in which they developed sport infrastructures with the creation of new technologies or mechanisms facilitating the activities or with the building of new edifices. Based on the examples of some Swiss engineers and architects, this paper illustrates how they saw the link between the city and sport and to what extend was the development of sport integrated in their professional skills. The notion of 'socio-technical sport and leisure system' helps in many ways to retrace the interactions between all these components be personal, professional, public, private, technical, social, ideological. It makes understandable the logic and the coherence which link individual actions and collective undertakings. We can assume that, during the first part of the twentieth century, many engineers and architects, active in leisure and sport issues, supported the same ideas: the investigation of new dimensions of life related to self-accomplishment and wellness and connected to new visions of society.
ISSN:0952-3367
1743-9035
DOI:10.1080/09523367.2012.708611