DESA1002 'Nine Quarter City' - <Maxim Hutton>

Abstract

For this semester’s design project, our group was allocated Bern, the Swiss capital. This became the starting point from which I derived the program of my site. I researched iconic products and symbols from Switzerland in order to create a unique, yet wholly Swiss building, settling upon Swatch and Toblerone as my symbols. As the main shop of Swatch and Toblerone, the building would be a tourist attraction and would have to be an exciting place, an event, to make visiting this building worthwhile. Upon looking at precedent Swatch watch shops, it was apparent that the interior design is always very bright and plastic. Swatch is quite a playful brand and it revolutionised the wristwatch as an accessory. Toblerone, and the Swiss mountains, is instantly recognisable by its triangular form. These factors trigged the notion of primary geometric shapes and colours to create bright, playful building, using the form of the triangular prism for Toblerone, and the circle, extrapolated into a cylinder, as a Swatch watch shop and clock tower – a contemporary take on the famous clocktower of Bern. The notion of primary shapes and colours was upheld for all aspects of the building, including the structure, which in the Toblerone used a triangular truss system, and in the cube used a post and beam construction. As a result, the Swatch watch shop and Toblerone café is an instantly recognisable icon within Bern, and it would be an exciting experience to move through the intriguing and complex internal spaces created by the intersection of simple volumes.