The design of the municipal building and the Port Gitana hotel plays on the tension between the specific context of Lake Geneva and the universal force of globalization and standardization. This is reflected in the distinction between the ground floor and the upper floors.
The public base of the building is characterized by expressive natural stones in solid granite which are extracted in rough blocks from local quarries. The oversized stones refer to the rocks that can be found in Lake Geneva and form a specific understanding of time and scale. By manufacturing the blocks in different ways (breakage, sawing, polishing), the elements inside and outside provide different impressions and atmospheres.
The upper floors are conceptually understood as the universal part of the program with clients of international hotels, meeting rooms and sustainability measures. This part of the building is executed with precast concrete elements in a generic grid structure. The architectural tension between the base and the upper layer thus symbolizes the position of our contemporary culture which always consists of place-specific and universal influences.
In collaboration with: Werf en Nass Engineers
Location: Bellevue, Switzerland
Type: Competition entry
Year: 2018