{"id":2534,"date":"2026-07-20T11:01:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T11:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/petermbach.com\/?page_id=2534"},"modified":"2026-08-24T20:17:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:17:44","slug":"069-silvia-oppliger","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/petermbach.com\/index.php\/podcast\/069-silvia-oppliger\/","title":{"rendered":"TGC Podcast Episode 069 – Silvia Oppliger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Grand Challengers Podcast Episode #69<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Switzerland’s sponge city network, breaking silos and the trouble with a “spongy” word<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Guest: Silvia Oppliger<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

August 25th, 2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Switzerland spent most of a century getting rainwater out of sight as quickly as possible. Reversing that is less a technical problem than an organisational one, and Silvia Oppliger has spent three years working on the organisational half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An environmental engineer trained at EPFL, she began in wastewater almost by accident, applying to anything with the word “water” in the job description. She spent years at an engineering consultancy and helped write the national guidance on managing wastewater and rainwater in wet weather. That work is also what showed her the limits of her own profession. Rules written by water people, for water people, only reach projects at the permit stage, long after the decisions that matter have been made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022 she took over the Swiss Water Association’s sponge city initiative on two criteria: a network outside the water sector, and more than one national language. Since then she has assembled a network spanning federal offices, cantons, municipalities, universities, the professional associations for engineers, architects, landscape architects and spatial planners, and the insurance sector, including the cantonal building insurers and the Mobiliar cooperative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conversation moves through the specifics that make Swiss practice unusual. Article 7 of the Water Protection Act and its narrow focus on infiltration. The awkward legal grey zone where cantonal street laws meet green infrastructure. The regional split where soil expertise flows in from France and water engineering from Germany. And the property boundary, which Silvia names as the single line where the biggest gains are still locked up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underneath it runs a quieter thread about language. She grew up with three, learned to hold her own in a room of 70 male engineers at 27, and now argues that the profession’s next task is learning a fourth one: architect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Episode Teaser<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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