A history to pass on.
New horizons to open.

Jean l’Aîné Aigroz was a schoolmaster and astrologer. His story places this lineage within a longstanding interest in knowledge and the questions of its day.

Receiving this inheritance raises a question that reaches across generations: how can what has been passed down be preserved while allowing it to meet new needs?

Architects Bosset and Bueche designed the house in the year Oscar and Germaine married. Oscar’s service as syndic connected with banking, the post office, commerce and the modernisation of water and electricity.

This link between a private place and collective life gives inheritance a concrete perspective. The great changes of an era are also expressed through services, infrastructure and everyday practices. Heritage is therefore more than an object to preserve: its meaning lies in the relationships it makes possible.

This final transfer brought together family history and Üriel’s project around a shared place. The Convention du TempL accompanied the 2020 transfer, connecting the preservation of this inheritance with reflection on its future uses.

Such an inheritance raises questions of organisation as well as maintenance. It calls for bringing together the memory of those who came before, the needs of people living today and the possibilities left to those who follow. This concern for continuity informs the Foundation’s approach to institutions: rules organise continuity, but they must also remain open to discussion and revision.

Education provides access to knowledge and sound methods of judgement. Support for establishment helps people build a life and pursue an activity. Assistance responds when autonomy is weakened. These three aims give substance to family philanthropy.

Freedom of conscience adds a further requirement: everyone should be able to form an idea, express it and compare it with others. The Foundation carries this thread into its publications and projects. Sharing knowledge means more than distributing it; it also means making the reasoning accessible so that it can be understood, challenged and developed further.

In 2018, discovering Oscar’s will led Üriel to rethink the transfer of the estate and its philanthropic purpose. The project took the form of a family foundation, initially intended to support members of the lineage. The framework invoked was Article 335 of the Swiss Civil Code, concerning education, establishment, assistance and similar purposes.

This mission broadened the discussion of how it could be fulfilled. AI-assisted learning, cognitive augmentation and interfaces between humans and artificial systems place autonomy, identity and access to legal protections at the centre of the work. The Foundation thus connects research and tool design with its thinking on education and assistance.

The experiment also concerns the design of the institution itself. The project considers the contributions of a natural person, a legal person and an entity proposed as an “electronic person”. It formulates a framework for specifying their identity, capacities, rights and responsibilities. This “electronic person” remains a research proposal without established legal recognition.

In October 2025, the Foundation formalised the distinction between its family mission and research intended for a wider public. It set out the legal questions raised by this dual purpose and the proposed forms of organisation through which to pursue it. This work structures its analysis by connecting family support, research and the sharing of proposals with society.

Since 2025, the Üriel von Hollenweger association has carried out public-facing work within a framework distinct from the family mission. This arrangement gives research, publications and collaborations a clear place. Fondation UvH is the name under which this research and transmission are presented; the association provides the public-facing structure.

The Foundation shares analyses and proposals shaped by this history. Its work on electronic personhood, responsibility and institutional reciprocity extends questions encountered in its own design. Publications explain the reasoning and invite criticism; collaborations test it against other disciplines and situations. Confédération S-Д.holdings, the principal project supported, offers a proposed setting for institutional experimentation, distinct from the Foundation and its associative structure.

This purpose remains open to cultural, scientific, social, environmental and human questions. Dune University informs reflection on power and technical dependence; ЯдT on living systems and coexistence; Wingsuit on perception, risk and technological assistance. Each initiative brings its own perspective to the transformations of an era.