best architects 18

Inaugurated in 1898, the Swiss National Museum was conceived as an eccentric architectural collage charged to celebrate the newly born and multifaceted federalist state. A bit more than a century later, its original layout had become outdated. Christ & Gantenbein won the international competition to realize the museum’s extension located in the city center near the main train station. The proposal acknowledges the assemblage principle and doesn’t take sides with ideal architecture. Closing the existing buildings’ u-shaped perimeter, the new volume takes the shape of a dramatically bent bridge that allows visitors to experience the exhibitions along a non-interrupted path but leaves the access from the courtyard to the neighbouring Platzspitz park open. The extension offers flexible exhibition spaces, a study centre with library and a large auditorium. The design managed to create a unity between old and new through the reinterpretation of existing architectural motifs: the origami-like roof landscape of the extension evokes the wild pitched-roofs composition of the original, while the double wall construction of the new wing is as thick as the 19th-century walls to while fulfilling contemporary energy-saving standards. The characteristic color of the old building’s tuff façade is matched in the extension through the addition of a tuff aggregate to the concrete.