Stücheli Architekten: Neubau Credit Suisse “Uetlihof“, Zürich - best architects 13

Stücheli Architekten

Neubau Credit Suisse “Uetlihof“, Zürich

best architects 13

office/administrative buildings

Place

Zürich

Photos

Joos / Sücheli Architekten

Description

This latest addition represents the eighth stage in the expansion of the Uetlihof complex. Developed by Stücheli Architekten starting in the 1970s as a large-scale urban ensemble, Uetlihof is currently being extended to offer workplaces for over 8,000 employees. The extremely complex and heterogeneous demands placed on the new office building have been answered in a structure that is highly functional while also serving as a landmark with which its users can identify. In terms of design, the structure picks up on both built and natural themes and combines them into a new and precisely conceived morphology. The tectonic layering evident particularly in the base storeys becomes the prime design theme for the new building. Uetlihof as a whole, with its varied buildings and open spaces as well as their circulation routes and infrastructure, forms a complete, geometric, urban (eco-)system. Like organelles in a cell, the individual functions are distributed across the entire grounds, apparently at random. The result is a kind of zoning that frees itself from any rigid grid pattern, following instead the functional laws of a living cell.