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The Swiss woman who made a splash in Boston

woman sitting on riverbank
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Swiss architect Renata von Tscharner has spent over two decades championing the cause of the Charles River in Massachusetts.

In 2000, she founded the Charles River Conservancy (CRC)External link, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving the urban parklands along the waterfront.

Having grown up swimming in the River Rhine in Basel, Renata wants to get people swimming in the once badly-polluted Charles. The CRC is developing plans for a swim park that would give Bostonians the chance to enjoy the river that inspired the song “Dirty Water” by The StandellsExternal link.

The gallery below shows Renata on both sides of the “big pond”:

We first met Renata in 2018. This episode of The Swiss Connection podcast was updated during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Renata also consulted on this travelling exhibition on urban swimming:

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Two men playing with a ball in a river

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The rise of urban swimming in Swiss cities

This content was published on ‘Swim CityExternal link‘ also looks at contemporary river-swimming projects from Europe and the US, such as ‘Flussbad’ in Berlin, ‘POOL IS COOL’ from Brussels, ‘Thames Baths’ in London, ‘Ilot Vert’ in Paris, ‘Charles River Swimming Initiative’ in Boston and  ‘+POOL’ in New York. (S AM Swiss Architecture Museum) ​​​​​​​

Read more: The rise of urban swimming in Swiss cities
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SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR