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Projects

Holliger O1 Residential High-Rise

Bern, 2020

Esch Sintzel Architekten

The most important places in the high-rise – at the bottom, on the threshold to the city, and at the top, on the threshold to the sky – are dedicated to the most important spaces for living together. Right next to the small café is the spacious, high-ceilinged cultural space, which can be directly connected to the courtyard thanks to its upward-swinging garage doors. This gives the large building the public dedication befitting a building of this height. At the top of the building is the restaurant with views in all directions and two spacious terraces.

It is not the big events on special days that turn neighbours into friends, but the small, brief encounters in everyday life. Much more important than spa oases on the roof or large banqueting halls on the ground floor are the encounters on the doorstep. To encourage this, we are proposing neighbourhoods of eight flats that share a two-storey hall. Only by grouping two storeys together can enough neighbours come together.

Thanks to the hexagonal spaces in front of the access halls on both sides, the Holliger high-rise can accommodate a variety of scenarios for different uses. For this reason, the proposed categorisation of uses is to be understood as a snapshot: As laundrettes or yoga rooms, the rooms expand the collective space on offer, as «joker rooms» they are temporarily privatised and as «connectable rooms» they remain private. 

Auguste Perret, apartment building Rue Franklin 25, Paris, 1903

Cred­its

Address

Quartier Holliger, 3008 Bern

Programme

66 apartments, communal areas, commercial spaces, restaurant

Client

EBG Bern

Commission type

project competition, 2020

Energy standard

SIA Efficiency Path 2040 

Project lead

Simon Rott

Project team

Steffen Jürgensen, Severin Kurt, Christian Ott

Specialist planning and consultants

Structural engineering

Makiol Wiederkehr

Fire safety

Makiol Wiederkehr

Building services, sanitary and electrical planning

Bogenschütz

Image credits

visualisations: Matthias Gnehm

Further projects

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