Project Category: Competitions (not realized)

On the interior, the brick columns are finely stuccoed or limewashed. The flooring of the school tract is made with red clay or ceramic tiles, respectively. Thus, they are also made of fired material, though left untreated in contrast to the masonry. The masonry is stuccoed on the outside.

The architecture as well as the choice of materials for the stone sculptor and mason's school are consciously kept straightforward. The actual "richness" of the building will be formed by the works of the sculptor and stone mason apprentices. Student work should not just be displayed in the workyard or decorate a wall from time to time. Rather, it should become an integral part of the architecture of the school. Every year one or two "window openings" could be clad with stone jambs made by the students. The jambs would be fabricated from various types of stone. Their surfaces would be bush hammered, droved or abraded, and have text or be in half-relief. The architecture determines here only the size of the masonry opening and a maximum stone thickness with regard to the size of the finished window opening. The stonework should be mounted by the students themselves.

The windowsills made of weather-resistant, impregnated Bakelite plywood are consequently just temporary. They fulfill their purpose until the moment when they are replaced, piece by piece and year by year, by stone jambs and sills from the "production" of the trade school.

With regard to the use of stone jambs and stuccoed masonry, the stone sculptor and mason's school makes reference to the classical schoolhouse architecture of the region. The skeleton construction and the formation of the sawtooth skylights refer, in addition, to the industrial character of the school.

The addition, which must make do with three leftover areas around and in the existing building, finds its own identity and ordering principle by virtue of the way in which it presents itself outwardly as an underground building with skylight volumes. With these elements, the new building is able to enter not just into a usage-based relationship, but more so into a precise architectonic relationship with the historical building. The composition of the intersecting, longitudinal stone volumes of the Rittmeyer & Furrer building is expanded and complemented by the translucent, glass skylight volumes of the new building.

During the day, the skylight volumes appear as large, white-glowing, glass volumes, while appearing as powerful, glowing lanterns at night.

The skylight volumes are developed out of the column/level structure of the sunken building volumes and grow towards the light as pure skeleton structures. In the interior of the building, they form those rooms that are foreseen for intense, individual work and for the public: the reading and periodicals room, the study rooms and the lending and entrance area in the courtyard.

The project follows the ideal type of a library space: large, extra-high rooms with skylights, in which people spend time in the anonymous collective, while yet alone in singular concentration upon the object of their study. The structure of the load-bearing construction forms a delicate space division for the virtual separation of the visitors.

Attention is called to the three institutions by means of a large-format sign made with metal letters that is placed as a powerful piece of inlay work into the flooring of the forecourt and into the roofing surface of the new building, respectively. The large, inlaid typography, over which one walks and upon which one stands, refers through and beyond its signage function to the "deeper meaning" of the ground under the visitor's feet.

The common entrance to the three institutions through the portico is left unchanged, allowing the wonderful staircase from Rittmeyer & Furrer to be left almost entirely intact. A new staircase descending to the new main floor of the library supplements the existing main staircase that connects the three institutions today.

The main building volume with the forum and conference rooms is set upon the artificial hill, providing an open view into the park and out beyond the treetops to the lake. The tract of guestrooms is oriented as a single-loaded structure towards the south and the landscape.

The space between the forum and the tract of guestrooms forms the entrance hall. From here one proceeds to a wide stairway along the tract of rooms down to the "French" garden, and continues from there along the garden wall to the dining rooms and meeting rooms of the villa.

One characteristic of the insurance business, redundancy, is reflected in the constructive scheme of the building. The construction of the heated spaces consists of two concrete, self-supporting walls with an insulated cavity in between. The unheated spaces are built with only one wall layer. Steel columns permit relatively large openings. They can be understood as a kind of "solid steel reinforcement" lay bare. Furthermore—like sunglasses—exterior, lightly-tinted, single-glazed sliding windows to the south, west and east form the primary sun shading in front of the interior, insulated sliding windows with clear glass. In the window cavity there is space for the additional, controllable sun and glare protection. Here the sandwich-window principle helps to protect the sun shading system from the wind.

The colored tint of the outer sun-shade glazing generates a slight coloration of the interior spaces. The various colors of the glazing produce a delicate polychromatic effect with the light in the entrance hall.