There are enough chocolate museums in the world, and they are all roughly the same: an exposition with a "visual" production line and a cocoa tree, a chocolate fountain, a branded shop at the end of the inspection. Lindt still has a fountain (authors Atelier Brückner, they are also the designers of the exposition), but otherwise the mood in the House of Chocolate is completely different. The task of the architects Christ & Gantenbein, best known for the expansion of the main museums in Basel and Zurich, was to create a "flagship" building that welcomes visitors to the Lindt & Sprüngli factory and decorates a small area there.
In addition to its thoughtful appearance, the building was required to accommodate a wide range of functions: a display dedicated to chocolate, R&D laboratories, production facilities, offices, as well as the inevitable cafe and shop.
But the main space was an atrium made of concrete and marble, 64 m long and 15 m high, directing the streams of people. In the deliberately enlarged columns - parts of the structure - elevator shafts are arranged and engineering networks are laid, their mushroom-shaped tops become balconies of galleries, spiral staircases twist around them, getting no less scale and "generous" dimensions.
At the same time, from the outside, the House of Chocolate looks almost modest, recalling the classic industrial buildings nearby. The red brick changes to glazed white only on the main façade, which recedes in a semicircle from the new square.
