Hasta La Ideas

Design cooperative NAU and DGJ have completed this interior for Swiss bank Raiffeisen in Zurich, featuring curving walls perforated to create pictures of faces. 

The bank is designed as a lounge with the banking terminals concealed within pieces of furniture.

The perforations extend from reception to the employee workstations and the courtyard beyond, creating abstracted images of historical residents from the local area,

The bank also houses meeting rooms, safety deposit boxes and an electronic information table.

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Photography is by Jan Bitter.

The following is from the architects:

Open Lounge by NAU

Raiffeisen’s flagship branch on Zurich’s Kreuzplatz dissolves traditional barriers between customer and employee, creating a new type of “open bank,” a space of encounter.  Advanced technologies make banking infrastructure largely invisible; employees access terminals concealed in furniture elements, while a robotic retrieval system grants 24 hour access to safety deposit boxes.

This shifts the bank’s role into becoming a light-filled, inviting environment – an open lounge where customers can learn about new products and services.  This lounge feels more like a high-end retail environment than a traditional bank interior.  Conversations can start spontaneously around a touchscreen equipped info-table and transition to meeting rooms for more private discussions.

The info-table not only displays figures from world markets in realtime, but can be used to interactively discover the history of Hottingen, or just check the latest sports scores.

Elegantly flowing walls blend the different areas of the bank into one smooth continuum, spanning from the customer reception at the front, to employee workstations oriented to the courtyard.  The plan carefully controls views to create different grades of privacy and to maximize daylight throughout.  The walls themselves act as a membrane mediating between the open public spaces and intimately scaled conference rooms.

Portraits of the quarter’s most prominent past residents like Böklin, Semper or Sypri grace the walls, their abstracted images milled into Hi-macs using advanced digital production techniques.  While intricately decorative, the design ground the bank in the area’s cultural past, while looking clearly towards the future.

Credits

Open Lounge was designed by the design cooperative NAU (www.nau.coop) with offices in Zurich, Berlin and Los Angeles in association with Drexler Guinand Jauslin Architekten.

NAU is an international, multidisciplinary design firm, spanning the spectrum from architecture and interior design to exhibitions and interactive interfaces. As futurists creating both visual design and constructed projects, NAU melds the precision of experienced builders with the imagination and attention to detail required to create innovative exhibits, public events and architecture.

NAU has quickly garnered recognition as an accomplished creator of fashionable interiors for retail, hotels, restaurants and residences. Its dedicated teams offer a personal touch, working with clients to align design approach with the appropriate market. Distilled in clear, contemporary forms, the designs of NAU promote modern, flexible solutions that engage and welcome.

NAU and DGJ collaborated with ROK (Rippmann Oesterle Knauss) on the design of the wall pattern.

Client

Raiffeisen Schweiz, Niederlassung Zürich

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NYU Department of Philosophy by Steven Holl	Studio 13 by Street & Garden Furniture Co.	Home 07 by i29

Swiss architects Group8 have completed this residential block covered in pink sun screens in Geneva.

Called Coral House, the project has a glazed facade that can be covered by fabric sunshades, which roll up into the window frames when not in use.

The building includes 58 housing units and two floors of commercial space, spread over five storeys and a basement level.

More about Group8 on Dezeen »

Photographs are by Régis Golay, FEDERAL studio.

The information below is from Group8:

The site

The Coral house is located in the Chandieu area, formed by a large urban block surrounded by Rue Giuseppe-Motta, Grand-Pré and Chandieu. The site is accessible by the main road Grand-Pré, this avenue lined with trees, cuts straight though the building block. The future underground parking will be accessible by the entrance of the adjacent building, the Azure center, located on the Grand-Pré road.

This new housing estate takes part of the regeneration of a former industrial site and completes, together with the Bamboo Residence, a large city block. At the intersection of the avenue and the Chandieu road, a public square supplemented by a fountain and a sculpture will be built in collaboration between the artiste Fabric Gygi and the architectural office ADR.

The building

The building consists of 6 floors, including a double attic (duplex apartments) and a single basement level. Coral house offers 58 housing units, from 4 to 6 room flats (kitchen counted as a room). The ground floor and the first floor are dedicated to commercial activities.

The construction aims to high quality standards in terms of space and equipments, as well as construction materials and coating. It also seeks the MINERGIE label, by using optimum insulation for the exterior envelope, and highly efficient technical installations (heating is provided by geothermal heat pumps; double flux air system is distributed through the ceiling – ERV). The use of a high energy standard allowed use to obtain 10 % additional net surface, compared to what was requested by the neighborhood plan.

The façade on the road front is entirely glazed, exposing the living rooms to the outside giving the impression that the building has been cut or like section in a doll house. The clients specifically asked for a building without balconies, the most suited solution capable to give an impression of the exterior was to have sizable sliding windows offering the possibility to open large sections of the façade. In the courtyard, each room is indicated by a window perforated in a roughcast wall with exterior insulation. The internal organization of the flats has been developed as typological system, which puts the hall in the center of the plan, allowing it to distribute all the rooms. The volume of the attic is designed as an object on a pedestal, its aluminum materialization tends to blend in with the sky.

Structural work elements

The structural system was sized not only to ensure stability of the building – including all seismic measurements-, but also to ensure a greater sound insulation between apartments but also between the apartments and the common areas. Therefore all bearing walls and slabs generally have a greater thickness than needed for regular stability requirements of the buildings.

All thermal insulation in the facades and roof has been sized to meet the MINERGIE label values, with a clear aim to reduce energy consumption and lower costs for consumers.

All windows in the courtyard were designed as «breathable» windows, meaning: coated aluminum frames with thermal breaks, last generation double glazing, with an additional third glass placed on the exterior in order to provide a ventilated space with a motorized window shade.

Heating and ventilation

The production of the heating and hot water is produced by a heat pumps supplied by geothermal boreholes. The apartment heating is a low temperature floor heating. The coils embedded in the concrete subflooring are fed by a dispenser located in the lobby, which modulates the temperature in each room based on their exposure or their size. In summer, the same network of coils can be supplied with cold water for cooling of the premises.

The ventilation is a type of «double flow system», fresh air (filtered, dusted, moisturized if necessary, heated) is prepared in the central and then fed into each room through a system in the ceiling located above the sanitary and hall. Meanwhile stale air, taken through the sanitary, is returned to central, where its heat is recovered by a heat exchanger, before being discharged.

This way, the air quality inside the housing is guaranteed at any time, without obligation to open the windows, and energy loss by ventilation is minimized.

CoralHouse Housing estate Area “Chandieu”, Petit-Saconnex 70-70D, Rue du Grand-Pré 1202 Geneva lot 5028 City of Geneva

Programme — Net Area
Housing: 8’450sqm
Commercial premises: 1’930sqm
Basement: 1’029sqm
Total of 58 housing units Commercial premises on the ground and first floors Energy standard Minergie®
Client: A&A Real Estate Grand-Pré SA

Consultants
Project management: PBM Planungs und Baumanagement AG
Civil Engineer: Walt+Galmarini AG, Perreten & Milleret
M&E Engineer: SB Technique
Sanitary Engineer: Mike Humbert ingénieur conseil
Electricity Engineer: MAB-Ingénierie SA
Building Engineering Physics: Basler & Hoffmann Holding AG

Statistical values
Net area: 11’492sqm
Built volume: 38’100m3

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Cherokee by Pugh + Scarpa	Altis Belém Hotel by Risco	Step Up on Fifth by Pugh + Scarpa

Here’s another football training centre (see Soweto training ground in our earlier story), this time a football academy for the junior team of FC Basel 1893 in Switzerland by Swiss studio Luca Selva Architekten.

Called FCB Youngster Campus, the rectangular building will feature an array of circular windows puncturing the white concrete façade, arranged to represent a graph of the club’s ranking during its 120 year history.

A long paved walkway will direct visitors to the entrance, which will have the dimensions of a football goal, where a funnel-shaped walkway will lead people towards the five pitches at the rear of the building.

Construction is planned to begin in summer this year.

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More buildings for sports on Dezeen »

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The following information is from the architects:

FCB Youngster Campus Basel, Switzerland

The Campus building forms a new landmark in the plain of Brüglingen. It is a place of convergence, a venue for the professional education by a football club that created itself a reputation throughout Europe and that nourishes accordant ambitions.

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The professional players of the first squad practice on the same grounds as the top junior teams and thus provide an everyday example for the youngsters in terms of a sustainable development by FC Basel 1893. The new Campus picks up this spirit and offers various spaces for this exemplary youth system.

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The scale of the building refers to the wide open space of the existing football pitches. It provides it with a measurable depth and concludes it with the main entrance in the shape and size of a goal.

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The facade of white concrete appears solid as well as light at the same time and displays the club’s successes. The pattern of the round windows corresponds to the club’s ranking over the last nearly 120 years.

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The new Campus stands for a self confident club that demands recognition and respect.

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Client: Stiftung Campus-Nachwuchs Basel
Study Commission 2010: 1st prize
Execution: 2011-2013

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House in Binningen by Luca Selva Architects	Sports Pavillion by MoederscheimMoonen	Football Training Centre Soweto by RUFproject

Geneva studio Clavienrossier created this home in the Swiss Alps by adding two tinted concrete volumes atop the remains of a stone house and adjacent barn.

The project is located in Charrat in the Valais canton of Switzerland and involved demolishing much of the existing structure while retaining the original cellars and floors.

The two concrete additions have faceted walls, angled inwards towards an opening in each side.

Rooms in the new upper storeys are connected, with circulation around the edge of each volume.

Photographs are by Roger Frei.

Here are some more details from the architects:

Situated away from the village, this house included an adjacent barn and had a too vast volume to be renewed in its totality.

Only elements which can easily be reused were preserved, cellars and floors of the pre-existent house. The rest was demolished.

Volumes of visible tinted concrete replaced the double-sided roof and the transformed area.

The big openings so created allow the light to penetrate more generously.

The geometry of the superstructures results both from a formal desire and from a will to remove the wall thickness.

The various-slopes faces enhance the highly varied game of the shadows throughout the day. There are no corridors.

Circulation is made along the external wall, from room to room.

The overall view continues beyond the windows, opening onto the surrounding landscape.

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Trufa by Anton García-Abril	House in the Pyrenees by Cadaval & Solà-Morales	Ribbon House by G2 Estudio

Swiss architecture studio dB_dubail begert architectes have completed this translucent extension of a residential building in Le Noirmont, Switzerland.

The outside stairwell frees up internal space and is made of a polycarbonate shell that allows people outside to see movement within.

The metal staircase reflects coloured light from the tinted glazed panels that change colour from floor to floor.

The illuminated interior gives the building a coloured glow at night.

Here’s more from the architects:

The installation of an outside stairwell allows increases space in the cramped apartments of this building of labour apartments built in 1907.

Translucent polycarbonate shells play with reflections and transparency effects, to give to this volume an evanescent presence.

Inside, floors, stairs and ceilings are made of raw aluminum sheets.

This industrial materiality is clouded by the coloured light through the warm colours of the interior polycarbonate wall.

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Víctor de la Serna y Espina by Julio Barreno	51A Gloucester Crescent by John Glew	Matilde House by Ailtireacht Architects