57


The communal areas have some of the best views of 


known for projects such as Tate Modern and Beijing’s ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium. But this would be its first ever building in French-speaking Switzerland. Early on in the process, at a meeting be-


tween the bankers and the architects, Lom- bard Odier managing partner Frédéric Ro- chat says he expected the conversation to revolve around ‘square metres, density and floor space’. Instead, ‘it ended up very quick- ly in a philosophical discussion. The ques- tion that Herzog & de Meuron asked us was, “Can you tell us more about what it means to be a bank in the 21st century?”’ ‘Is a bank still somewhere its clients keep their money?,’ the architects wondered. ‘Should we build a fortress with thick walls and small windows? Or isn’t a bank in the 21st century much more about expertise and value-add for clients?’ This developed into an ambition to expose the bank’s expertise, Rochat says, and to create a structure that encouraged fluidity, move- ment and collaboration.


A


ccording to Pierre de Meuron, these early philosophical conversations, combined with an understanding of


the physical site, allowed him and his team to establish ‘a form’ for the building. Rather than evoke a traditional thick-walled bank vault, it is ‘a millefeuille’, designed to ‘max- imise the perception of le Grand Paysage’. Transparent and open, it allows light to en- ter and its inhabitants to move. However, perhaps the most striking


element of the design is what Christine Binswanger, the Herzog & de Meuron part- ner most closely involved with the project, describes in English as a ‘cut’ or ‘light hole’ in the roof. It has a more pleasing name in French: ‘fente de lumière’. A vast elliptical skylight that hovers above the atrium, creat- ing the impression of a canyon that allows natural light to reach far within the build- ing. The atrium, encased by glass-walled offices, is intended to allow the principle of ‘openness’ to translate into the building’s interior, too. Later this year, once all the bank’s Gene-


MARIS MEZULIS


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