Article source: Richter Dahl Rocha & Associés architectes SA
The site comprises an ensemble of five historical buildings owned by UBS which are bounded by rue de la Confédération, rue du Commerce, rue du Rhône, and the historic Passage des Lions in the prestigious neighbourhood of Les Rues-Basses in Geneva. In January 2009, UBS launched a competition for projects to transform these structures in order to bring them up to contemporary standards of use, functionality, safety, and energy efficiency.
After winning the international architectural design competition, Stuttgart based wittfoht architekten were commissioned to build the extension of the World Trade Organization headquarters in Geneva. The new administrative building, integrated into the site, creates a feeling of openness and transparency.
The conception of the building starts from the consideration that architecture can not be designed anymore by a single “one move” since it is generating a new worldwide series of almost boring “tilted/lifted/pushed” standard buildings.
The project investigates how to overcome the simplicity generated by a single “one move” creating instead a simple complexity generated by a combination of “more moves”.
The “Avenue de France” administrative building is sat on a site which imposes several constraints. It was built on a site bordering the CFF (national) railway lines, limited on its northern end by the Avenue de France and adjacent to a pre-existing building. The site’s topography also imposes varying conditions namely: the railway tracks to be found at the lowest point, the level of the access to the underground parking, the level of the Avenue de France over-passing the railway and the general level of the existing adjacent buildings. It is worth noting that before construction of the building the site had long been considered as ‘unsuitable’ for development.
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
