Tribute to Roland Gay (1942–2025)

The recent preparation for the transfer of his archives to the Archives de la construction moderne (ACM) at EPFL allowed us to discover a man of profound humanity, whose warm welcome in his family home—surrounded by fragrant chestnut trees—remains an especially vivid memory.

Trained at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, where he earned his architecture degree in 1968, Roland Gay belonged to a generation for whom architecture was not an abstract discipline but a way of inhabiting the world with precision, respect, and humility. Even before completing his studies, he multiplied internships with leading figures in the field (Daniel Girardet in Sion, Walter Niehus in Zurich, Jean-Paul Darbelley in Martigny, then Morisod, Kyburz, Furrer in Sion). These concrete experiences would nourish his keen sense of construction and detail.

After a period with Philippe Bridel in Zurich, he joined Pierre Zoelly’s office in 1968, collaborating with him for a decade — notably on the Vergottes terraced houses in Choëx. This period profoundly shaped his spatial thinking: an architecture attentive to use, structured, and always rooted in the craft of building.

In 1978, he returned to Monthey and joined the family business, Gay Frères Monthey SA, reconnecting with a world he knew intimately: timber construction, artisanal precision, and intergenerational transmission. For him, wood was less a statement than a concrete reality — a material whose possibilities he explored with rigor, attentive to the way elements come together and age to form the coherence of a building.

In 1982, he opened his own architectural office and developed a patient, consistent body of work. Chalets, family homes, delicate renovations: each project was conceived as a precise response to a place, a use, and real needs. He also completed more complex commissions — the La Castalie medico-educational centre, the Malévoz psychiatric hospital, the Grand-St-Bernard Customs, the chapel of the Le Castel medical-social centre, as well as numerous interventions at the Dailly and Savatan military training grounds.

In Monthey and throughout the region, many buildings and public spaces bear his discreet yet firm mark: the transformation of the La Placette shopping centre, the renovation of the Maison de la Famille Vérolliez, or the Maison de la Pierre in Saint-Maurice. Everywhere, one finds his sense of proportion — that way of adjusting a volume, a light, or a texture until the place simply “holds”.

His work was recognised by his peers: an honourable mention at the Lignum Prize in 1985, then the Gaspoz Foundation Prize in 1989. He exhibited several times, notably at the SPSAS exhibition in Martigny in 1982 and at the SPAS exhibition Architettura contemporanea del Vallese in Locarno in 1987.

But beyond distinctions, it was the exchanges with him that left the deepest impression. Warm, generous, enthusiastic, he took genuine pleasure in sharing his work. Speaking about his projects came naturally to him — almost joyfully. He spoke of his houses and chalets as one speaks of living beings, with an almost affectionate attention to details, materials, and the gestures of construction. Sophie Delhay, director of the Architecture Section, recalls “a moving memory of our conversations during the handover of his archives and the presentation of the book at the ACM, centred on his hedonistic vision of domesticity.”

In 2009, his daughter Catherine Gay Menzel and his son-in-law Götz Menzel joined the office, taking it over in 2013. Roland Gay continued to collaborate with them until 2022 — an act of continuity that says much about his commitment to transmission and his trust in the next generation.

His passing affects us deeply. We will remember Roland Gay as a precise and grounded architect, deeply attached to his valley and his craft — but above all as a man of great generosity, able to share his knowledge, his curiosity, and his perspective with luminous simplicity.

To his family, his loved ones, and to all those who were touched by his work, we extend our most sincere condolences.