Herzog & de Meuron . photos: Margherita Spiluttini, © Architekturzentrum Wien
The building serves the fully automated storage of herbal sweets. Seen from the outside and from a distance, the building reveals itself as a singular unified whole, as something that one could understand as a storage building. The Eternit panels, larger at the top than at the bottom, make up the cladding and underline the difference between the lower part, where innumerable individual foundations support the façade construction, and the upper part, where a cantilevering timber construction reveals the galvanized sheet-metal box on the building’s inside.
_
Visual references are also made to the traditional stacking of sawn timber boards around the numerous saw mills of the area, as well as to the limestone quarry within which the storage building sits. The foundation beams have been left exposed. Layers of construction have been left visible so that the basic cladding of galvanized sheet metal can be seen with the loading bay. The image of the stacking of planks is seen on approaching the building; every element of the cladding is a kind of storage frame wherein parts of the façade are “stored“, just as goods are stored in the building’s interior.
Herzog & de Meuron, 1988
_
Laufen, Switzerland
Project 1986, realization 1987
Herzog & de Meuron Team:
Partners: Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron
Client:
Ricola, Laufen, Switzerland
Planning:
Structural Engineering: R. Schmidlin, Laufen, Switzerland
Electrical Planning: Elektro Burger, Basel, Switzerland
Specialist / Consultant:
Metal engineering: A. Schmidlin, Zwingen, Switzerland
Timber construction: G. Kämpf AG, Rupperswil, Switzerland
Building Data:
Building Area: 2,900sqm (facade) / 3,1215sqf
