Archinect - News

This Swiss minimalist home was designed as a 'blank canvas' to reflect its Lake Geneva surroundings

2024-09-13T11:42:00-04:00

Geneva, Switzerland-based firm Leopold Banchini Architects has designed a sleek, minimalist home intended to reflect its alpine and waterside surroundings.

Image: Rory Gardiner

Located beside Lake Geneva, looking out at the Alps, Villa M was likened, by the architects, to the work of Swiss painter Ferdinant Hodler. His paintings often depicted mountains reflected in Swiss lakes.

Image: Rory Gardiner

As a reaction to its landscape, the home was built to stay as simple and humble as possible. Its long, plain façade is described as a blank canvas, which reflects into a water basin of the same length. Here, a singular long window opens onto a floating terrace that is of a similar size.

Image: Rory Gardiner

The building’s long rectangular plan, constrained by building regulations, is spread across three levels. A wooden spiral staircase connects the floors.

Image: Rory Gardiner

The ground floor living spaces mainly open out to the surroundings, whil...

Renzo Piano completes CERN's new Science Gateway project in Geneva

2023-10-13T15:13:00-04:00

Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) has shared photos following the inauguration of its new CERN Science Gateway project in Geneva, Switzerland.

The project for clients at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN) was realized in collaboration with the local studio Brodbeck Roulet Architectes Associés and offers the agency room for an expanded education and outreach program capable of handling between 300,000 and 500,000 visitors annually.

Image © CERN

The project’s design is inspired by the tubing integral to CERN’s famed Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator and houses two new laboratories, three small exhibition areas, a 900-seat auditorium, shop, and restaurant in a footprint totaling just over 75,000 square feet. A bridge suspended 20 feet above the ground connects the five separate spaces. RPBW says it also establishes a central metaphor as the “link between science and society.”

Image © CERN

More than 400 trees were planted in order ...

Aecom and SOM to revamp United Nations Geneva HQ

2018-08-09T15:26:00-04:00

Aecom has been appointed by the United Nations to work on the renovation of its European headquarters in Geneva. [...] The UN is looking to upgrade the systems at its 100,000 sq m Palais des Nations complex, much of which was built in the 1930s. Aecom will work with architects SOM and Burckhardt+Partner to renovate the power, cooling, security and IT systems.

Completed in 1938 as the League of Nations HQ, the expansive Palace of Nations building complex has been the home of the United Nations Office at Geneva since 1946 (Switzerland actually did not join the UN until 2002).

The Aecom/SOM team is joined by Swiss firm Burckhardt+Partner.

Tour the optical illusion of Giovanni Vaccarini's facade system for the SPG Headquarters

2017-02-16T13:59:00-05:00

Relax, you don't need new glasses: the closely spaced, suspended panes of glass on Giovanni Vaccarini's SPG Headquarters in Geneva purposefully create a blurred/vibrating effect, especially when viewed from a distance.

However, producer The Piranesi Experience and filmmaker Claudio Esposito have made a film about the SPG called "Deep Into the Surface" which, according to the filmmakers "investigates the abstract and conceptual dimension that architect Giovanni Vaccarini imparted to the façade system that characterizes the building of the SPG Headquarters in Geneva. A game made of simple rules, whose reiteration produces a complex play of elements to the point that its perception varies with weather and lights. The photography by Fabio Paolucci and the original soundtrack by Populous underline the exploration of these qualities and let the spectator perceive the depth of the surface and its apparent movement." You be the judge:

Jean Nouvel's museum extension plans narrowly rejected in Geneva

2016-03-02T14:04:00-05:00

The people of Geneva have narrowly rejected a controversial plan to extend and renovate the city’s Musée d’Art et d’Histoire by the French architect Jean Nouvel. The “non” camp won the public vote on 28 February with 54%. Ateliers Jean Nouvel in Paris designed the planned extension, which was approved by Geneva’s municipal council last May, in collaboration with the local firms Architectures Jucker and DVK Architectes.[...] The council must now launch a new competition for the museum.

Related Nouvel stories in the Archinect news:

Open henge policy: BUREAU A designs shipping container Stonehenge for BIG biennale

2015-10-28T18:25:00-04:00

"Steelhenge," BUREAU A's design for the inaugural BIG biennale for independent art spaces, isn't just 50 blue shipping containers arrayed to mimic Stonehenge's layout in the center of Geneva: it was also the site of a four-day party in June to celebrate the open-spirited biennale, which according to a written statement provided by BUREAU A's Daniel Zamarbide, "represents a remarkable initiative to bring out art to the city, literally opening its doors to everyone. Contrary to the settlements of the 70’s (Drop City, etc.) considered at times as too insular, BIG concentrates a wide variety of players that speak out for many reasons and purposes."

Musicians, writers, artists and Genevan passerby could stroll into the installation, which according to Zamarbide "is an informal monument made out of people assembling for an unconditional engagement in culture and art."

Stand on the shoulders of giants as CERN's architect in residence

2015-02-05T15:40:00-05:00

A year before discovering the Higgs boson, aka “God”, particle, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) established its own arts residency. Formed in 2011, the Collide@CERN program pairs artists with CERN physicists in Geneva to collaborate on art and research projects, banking on the idea that artistic experimentation and theoretical physicists are both ultimately concerned with the same thing: "both are ways to explore our existence – what it is to be human and our place in the universe,” according to program director Ariane Koek. The first collaboration between artist Julius von Bismarck and theoretical physicist James Wells was so fruitful that CERN developed Accelerate@CERN in 2013, which enables a country to set up and sponsor a specific "Research Stay" within CERN’s labs. Now, Austria is looking for an architect to work at CERN.

What does this entail? For one month of pure research, an architect will be paired with a CERN physicist – to work, think, and ideate to...