An editorial field journal — kept slowly, written by one person.

Kunshaus is a small editorial field journal on the places of Switzerland. It is written by one editor — Beat Schärer, a cartographer by training and a lifelong reader of alpine landscape. The journal carries no advertising, lists no prices, sells nothing, and partners with no booking platform. Five readings per volume; each researched over multiple seasons; each verified on the field date shown.

The working method

Each entry begins with a route notebook. Beat keeps a small canvas-bound notebook for every reading — a single book follows a place across years, with the entries dated and the weather noted. When the editor judges that the notebook contains enough material to support a considered reading, the entry is drafted, set aside for two months, then returned to and edited against the cartographer's working principle: only what the foot has verified appears in the published text.

This produces a slow journal. Volume IV — the one in your hand now — contains five readings and represents approximately eighteen months of cumulative field time. The journal does not attempt comprehensiveness; it attempts considered depth on five sites that justify the format.

The editor

Beat Schärer (b. 1971, Thun) trained as a topographic cartographer at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH) in the early 1990s and worked for twelve years at Swisstopo — the federal mapping office — on the 1:25,000 series for the cantons of Bern, Uri and Valais. He left Swisstopo in 2008 to teach cartographic history part-time at the Berner Fachhochschule and to begin the editorial work that became, after several false starts, Kunshaus Field Journal in 2019.

He lives in Interlaken with his wife Lena (a geologist) and their two children. The journal is his second cartographic vocation — not a replacement for the first, but a continuation by other means.

The volume's five readings

• Reading 01 · Bernese Oberland. The Lauterbrunnen valley and its seventy-two waterfalls, with field notes on the foot-trails between the falls.
• Reading 02 · Zürich. The Kunsthaus and its 2021 Chipperfield extension, with the principal collection threads from Bührle, Brown, Looser and Hubacher.
• Reading 03 · Vaud. Lavaux — the UNESCO-listed terraced vineyards above Lake Geneva, with the foot route from Lutry to St-Saphorin.
• Reading 04 · Graubünden. The Bernina Express line from Chur to Tirano, with seat-side notes through the Engadine.
• Reading 05 · Lucerne. The lakeside museums — Verkehrshaus, Sammlung Rosengart, Bourbaki Panorama — and the walking route between them.

What the journal is not

• Not a booking platform. The journal sells nothing.
• Not an affiliate site. No commissioned links appear.
• Not a directory. Hotel, restaurant, transport operators are referenced only when they form part of the reading.
• Not a price list. Costs of entry, fares, and accommodation are stated when load-bearing, not catalogued.
• Not a comprehensive guide. The Swiss canton of Ticino, the entire Valais, the Jura watch country, the eastern alpine cantons — all unrepresented in Volume IV. They may appear in future volumes; they may not. The journal is finite.

The unhurried reading is the editorial principle. The map is read across the day; the place is read across the season; the season is read across the year. Volume IV is the fourth in this slow accumulation.

Volume IV — closed for publication in May 2026, Interlaken.