Bürohaus Clipper, Zurich, 2003—2004, Direct

Ambivalent corporeality

In the Clipper commercial building designed in 1951 by Werner Stücheli and Roland Rohn, which stands on the corner of Kasernen and Lagerstrasse and is under a preservation order, a nursing school was planned that would occupy the 3rd to 5th floors.


The simple primary structure consists of a loadbearing facade, an asymmetrical row of columns and a projecting staircase. A matching secondary structure with non-loadbearing plasterboard walls is inserted into it and shapes the character of the school rooms, meeting rooms, offices and lounge areas.


Through the use of prefabricated rounded plasterboard shells the circulation figure is, in a sense, anatomically shaped in both plan and section. The light shade of ivory used awakens associations with the human body and in this way suggests the corporate identity of the medical training that is offered here and the architecture of the 1950s.

Address

Lagerstrasse 1, 8004 Zurich

Commission

Renovation school

Planning period

2004

Photography

Walter Mair

Team

Kord Büning-Pfaue, Lorenzo Giuliani, Christian Hönger, Ilka Tegeler, Roberto Outomuro, Anita Reich