The Circle at Zurich Airport
This project is an eleven-story building complex located at Zurich airport. The building has retail program on the first and second floor, offices on floors three to eight, and a hotel on the ninth, tenth and eleventh floor. Parking is provided underground.
Each program needs a different thickness in order to get enough sunlight into each room. As a result, the facade steps back as the building rises. This contributes to this large structure’s soft expression that continues smoothly along the neighboring roads and the rear park, while providing a balcony on every floor.
The building has a looped shape. The upper part of the ring touches at two points. These Connections makes large spaces that become the restaurant, the spa, and a lobby. In the long thin courtyard, these tangents appear like valleys from below.
The structure is comprised of reinforced concrete walls with a 3.75m pitch on the ninth to eleventh floors (hotel) and reinforced concrete columns with 7.5m spans in the floor below. Some columns are at angles that follow the façade’s slant. This ensures that the columns take their loads effectively and that the reinforced concrete flat slab can be reduced to 350mm.
We have incorporated a doubleskin façade. Plants on balconies provide shading for the spaces within. The distribution of these plants change depending on the building’s orientation, creating a different appearance on each side.
(Soma Yokoi / SANAA)
