Gutenberg Centre
The commercial and residential building combines with the bank building designed by Ernst Gisel to form a clamp that grasps the first block of Kasernenstrasse with impressive, identity-enhancing buildings. The new building directly relates to the Gisel’s rhythmic façade that projects over the pavement. It concludes the street section as a response to it with a tectonic façade made of anodised aluminium. The building volume has been shifted out of the line of the neighbouring houses, resulting in a precisely framed forecourt at the transition to the older Gutenberg-Zentrum.
The arcade formed on the ground floor allows visitors to be guided to the store windows and into the entrance area. The rhythmical building, which was conceived as an envelope and a core, reacts sculpturally to the eaves heights of the neighbouring building by omitting one grid unit respectively; the façade line on the attic floor is recessed by 12 centimetres to give the building a vertical conclusion. Overall, the volume expresses its sculptural, harmonious appearance in a fragmented context.
On the rear side, the careful, tectonic articulation of the main façade makes way for a calmer mineral, flat plaster façade with selective openings. Even the emergency stairs contribute to the quality of the overall impression by formulating an architecture quasi en passant, before proceeding round to the arcade at the centre of the cantonal capital.
