A fundamental theme for the Swiss atelier Christ & Gantenbein is the question of the persistence of architecture, its sustainability in terms of ecology, economy, and social use. What will the future hold for what has been planted here as something completely new and contemporary? Will these buildings be able to withstand the test of time for decades, just as they used to?
For the expansion of the museum in Zurich, these questions were all the more pressing, as the new wing was to complement the spaces of the more than one-hundred-year-old historical building.
In the summer of 2016, fifteen years after construction began, new exhibition spaces, a public library, an auditorium, and a courtyard opened to visitors at the National Swiss Museum in Zurich. The new building adopts the conceptual means of its older counterpart. It complements its wing, is also fragmented into various scales and sizes, and reflects its roof landscape. While the romantic building was inspired by castles and temples, the extension takes its models from purely contemporary and pragmatic industrial buildings.
The construction of the new wing is designed as a monolithic whole. The new, 80-centimeter-thick concrete walls follow the strong stone walls of the 19th-century old building, meeting high thermal insulation requirements. Tuff, from which the old museum building is constructed, is also used as an aggregate for the concrete facade of the new wing. This was preceded by extensive technological testing in laboratories, as its physical properties affect the quality of the concrete. The resulting color scheme indicates that these two buildings belong together and form a single entity.
Concrete also dominates the interior spaces. The polished floors are a contemporary interpretation of terrazzo used in the old building. Beautiful details emerge on the stairs, facade openings, and elsewhere, where polished and shuttered surfaces meet. The walls and ceilings are also exposed (concrete), on which all technical elements are suspended, allowing the surfaces of all other finishes to stand out. Every detail is handled with precision and sensitivity, as they are often the only elements that stand out on the surface. Even the seemingly inconspicuous decorative railing in the entrance hall, which still belongs to the old building, serves as a concrete reproduction to analogously supplement the original railings nearby.
A unified color palette runs throughout the building, from the combination of colors in the stone mixture on the floor to the walls, lighting, infographics, and elegant brass elements of the railings and lights. Although a clear dynamic can be observed among the colors, the overall atmosphere carries a light and pleasant warm tone. Nothing from the museum's stable equipment intentionally disrupts this.
The Zurich National Museum is full of dialogues between two structures, where each speaks its contemporary language. The dialogue of two stones, one natural and one man-made - concrete. The dialogue of two generations. The younger building approaches the old one with respect and understanding. The authors did not perceive the project as an extension, but as the creation of a new whole composed of two parts.
When Christoph Gantenbein visited Prague in May of this year, he titled his lecture "More than 100 years." His atelier belongs to those that, during creation, are aware of the responsibility not only to their own generation but also to those that follow. It is also for this reason that he could say, with a hint of exaggeration, that if one works with seriousness, beauty, and strategy, these buildings can indeed survive for more than 100 years.
for the magazine BETON TKS 5/2017 written by Marie Čáslavská
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