The building is located in the village of Mennedorf, 19 km from Zurich, on the eastern side of the lake. The architect tried to make the most of the picturesque position of the site: he turned the building in an arc towards the water, lifted it on supports and made the facades completely transparent, revealing to the company's employees a magnificent panorama of the surrounding landscape.
Three floors of office space for 500 employees are designed to be extremely open and flexible in layout. According to the customer's idea, the free arrangement of work areas is necessary not only for formal and informal communication between company employees, but also in order to make any organizational changes simple and quick.
The ground floor, with a gallery open to the lake on slender pillars, houses a lobby with a recreational area, a restaurant and conference and seminar rooms. In addition, outdoor terraces for relaxation are located on the semicircular ledges of the second floor. There are 170 parking spaces in the basement.
Christoph Ingenhoven, reputed to be one of the leading European experts in the field of sustainable architecture, designed the building in full compliance with modern eco-standards. It uses water from the lake for both heating and cooling the interior, for example. Not only engineering systems, but also construction technologies are distinguished by high quality here: for example, the project of glazing of facades was carried out by the bureau of the famous engineer Werner Sobek.
N. K.
