Andermatt Central
At the heart of it all
Andermatt is growing – and at the heart of it lies the railway station. The Andermatt Central project not only links the old and the new village, it also creates living space for those who live and work here. Bruno Muoser, client representative of the Schmid Group, talks about a second phase that is more than just a building.
Anyone who gets off the train in Andermatt today is in the middle of a story that has not yet been completed. The historic village on the one side and Andermatt Reuss on the other – the new district with hotels, chalets and shops that has sprung up over the past 20 years. In between: the station. And with it Andermatt Central.
“You just need to join the pieces together because they have been cut apart,” says Bruno Muoser. As the client representative of the Schmid Group, he and Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn have accompanied the Central project from the outset – through planning, construction and operation. The challenge was not just architectural. Construction had to be carried out immediately next to ongoing railway operations, in groundwater, under constant safety supervision. “The passengers barely noticed,” he says. “But we always needed to think ahead.”
Sixty-six per cent primary homes
The result is not only convincing in terms of urban development. Of the 58 rental apartments in Central 1, 66% are currently occupied as primary residences – people who live here, pay their taxes here, live their daily lives here. “This surprised us in the best sense of the word,” says Muoser. Although the project would have been exempt from the second home initiative and it would have been possible to create only holiday apartments, Andermatt Central AG deliberately opted for rental apartments. The result: a mix of individuals, families, employees – and one third holidaymakers.
Central 2: 51 apartments, no retail
What is to be created from autumn 2026 builds on this experience. Central 2 will comprise 51 apartments – 2.5 to 3.5-room apartments – as well as around 800 square metres of office space. The lack of planned retail spaces is deliberate. Construction is scheduled to start in autumn 2026, with completion scheduled for the end of 2028.
Seventy percent of the apartments must be let as primary residences – a requirement of the municipality, which has been approved by Central AG. “We learned from the first stage that there is demand,” says Muoser. “That was a compromise that we could make.”
The building is heated by the Göschenen district heating system, which is fuelled by wood chips sourced from local producers. It is powered almost entirely by renewable electricity and the building is Minergie-certified.
A bridge that grows
If the military grounds of the DDPS are released one day, a third stage could follow. Only then, says Muoser, will the Central truly become a fully-fledged link – when the gap between old and new closes, step by step.