Real estate and construction
The skyscrapers do not try in French-speaking Switzerland as in Geneva
Thirty towers are announced at the end of the lake. It is much more than all the projects known in other French -speaking cantons.
Four laps are under construction in Malley, photographed here in May 2025. Some of them are being completed. In the coming years, four other “high buildings” could be built in the same district.
Yvain Genevay/Tamedia
- Tours construction projects are increasing in the Canton of Geneva for the next few years. It is not the same in other French -speaking cantons.
- In the canton of Vaud, around ten laps are under construction or planning in the Lausanne agglomeration, but the projects are dried up.
- Two laps are planned in the canton of Friborg.
If Tours projects multiply in Geneva for the years to come, the craze is not the same in the rest of French -speaking Switzerland. According to a EPFL study published in 2019“Concerning the new housing towers built for ten years, 90% have emerged in German -speaking Switzerland, compared to 7% in French -speaking Switzerland and 3% in Italian Switzerland”.
French -speaking Switzerland
Historically, French-speaking Switzerland is not to be outdone in this area, with a hitherto balanced distribution of the towers built on both sides of the Sarine, especially during the Thirty Glorious Years. The first tower in Switzerland is also that of Bel-Air (55 m), in Lausanne, built in 1932, and the Canton Romand which has the most housing towers, with 74 buildings (including the Ivory Tour de Montreux, 82 m), just behind Zurich (112 laps). The study counted 47 in Neuchâtel (for example the tower of the rue des Musées in La Chaux-de-Fonds, 22 floors), 18 in Friborg, fourteen in Valais and only ten in Geneva. While waiting for the end of the lake to catch up, the other French -speaking cantons have put the sweet pedal, even if there is no shortage of constructions and projects.
Vaud marks the step
In Vaud Terre, the Malley district, on the outskirts of Lausanne, concentrates the most sites and ambitions. Four laps are under construction, and five other “high buildings” are planned: one in the Malley Gazometer (in Renens) district, One in the Galician district (in Prilly), two in the Manufacture project (in Lausanne) and one in the Malley Martinet district (between Prilly and Lausanne). In Morges, two laps were recently built near the station, another in Yverdon while a 36 -story building must be born in Chavannes-près-renens et one of 18 floors Near Lausanne station.
And after? “There is nothing planned and it is not an axis of the city’s planning,” said Grégoire Junod, the trustee for Lausanne. It must be said that in 2014 already, the municipalities of the Lausanne-Morges agglomeration have a Strategy for the establishment of Tourswhich turns out to be rather cautious and not very incentive. We read that the towers are not particularly ecological or profitable and do not make it possible to densify more than more classic projects.
The dynamics are also dried up in the Western Lausanne: “After the referendums which targeted certain projects in Bussigny (Editor’s note: in 2012) and in Lausanne against the Taoua tower (Editor’s note: in 2014)the interest of the promoters has reduced. There was no longer any in the district after the pandemic, ”notes Benoît Biéler, director of the Office Strategy and Development of the Western Lausanne.
Two laps for Friborg
In Neuchâtel, the cantonal law limits the height of the buildings to six or seven floors. Municipal regulations can give more flexibility, but most date from the 90s and are being revised. The application of these regulations partly explains why there have been no tricks for decades, the cantonal services indicate.
On the side of Friborg, two laps are announced: one of 60 m in the capital for 2027 and another of 96 m in Givisiezin the agglomeration. The Friborg capital does not display other ambitions to build in height currently.
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