Winner of an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Awards competition, Christian Kerez, was nominated by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia to exhibit at the Swiss Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition. The architect and professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) aims to investigate the possibilities — technically, as much as in our imagination — of how to think, build and experience architecture differently.

This project to build a 15,000 square meter competence center includes research laboratories, office space, and generous training facilities. Perfectly circular atria cut through ceilings and floors crisscross the building, creating opportunities for employees and visitors to meet one another while also providing a sense of the building’s size from within.

Inner and outer loadbearing structures of the building are mutually-dependent, voids and passive solar heating allow a climate concept with a minimal technical installation with almost no core.

Read project feature in 4th Holcim Awards 2014/2015 (flip-book)

Christian Kerez radically separates the elevation and interior of a building while recognizing interdependencies. “Circular Voids: Energy-efficient office building, Holderbank, Switzerland” displays a series of outstanding features responding particularly well to most of the “target issues” for sustainable construction – merging architectural and technical considerations at the forefront of the discipline.

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The winning projects of the Holcim Awards 2014 for Europe illustrate how sustainable construction continues to evolve – developing more sophisticated and multi-disciplinary responses to the challenges facing the building and construction industry. An ecological reserve and remediation project in Southern Italy, a low-cost flexible university building in Paris, and a participatory urban neighborhood in Vienna won gold, silver and bronze.

The project displays a series of outstanding features responding particularly well to most of the “target issues” for sustainable construction – merging architectural and technical considerations at the forefront of the discipline. The energy concept, for example, using cutting-edge surface geothermal heat-recovery, airboxes, and hybrid collectors, finds an appropriate spatial expression that would not be possible with standard systems. Here, architecture benefits from technological advances, without relinquishing its autonomy as an art form.

This project to build a 15,000 square meter competence center includes research laboratories, office space, and generous training facilities. Perfectly circular atria cut through ceilings and floors crisscross the building, creating opportunities for employees and visitors to meet one another while also providing a sense of the building’s size from within. Inner and outer loadbearing structures of the building are mutually-dependent, voids and passive solar heating allow a climate concept with a minimal technical installation with almost no core.