The Tamedia media group's office building at Stauffacher in Zurich was opened on 9 July 2013. Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has designed a unique building consisting of wood and glass that offers high-calibre workplaces for some 480 employees.

Over the course of a century, the Werdareal site has evolved into a major hub of Swiss media activity. Numerous media enterprises have flocked to this site by the river Sihl since this trend began in 1902, when the editorial offices and printing works of the Tages-Anzeiger opened there.

Wooden supporting structure and magnificent glass facade.

The volume of Shigeru Ban's building conforms to the usual perimeter development and construction height standards in this district, and its mansard roof and overheight ground floor are in keeping with the typical characteristics of architecture in the Aussersihl quarter. At the same time, the new structure stands out because of its sustainable construction techniques and materials. The defining feature of the building is a wooden supporting structure for which 2,000 cubic meters of spruce wood were used. This supporting structure performs its function without any additional steel reinforcements, and was assembled on site from prefabricated components that were precision-milled down to the last millimeter. The magnificent glass facade creates a bright and welcoming interior ambience.

A sustainable contribution to architecture

Tamedia's aim was to make this building as sustainable as possible. A double facade facing the Sihl river acts as a buffer against climatic conditions as well as a natural ventilation system, and it affords space for meeting rooms and lounges that can be opened up to give onto the river. Wood is a renewable construction material, and its use helped to reduce emissions even during the construction phase. The building will also be operated without CO2 and will not make any use of nuclear power. Moreover, fossil fuels are eliminated thanks to a futuristic heating and cooling system that utilises the groundwater.

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Shigeru Ban was born in Tokyo in 1957 and after studying architecture in Los Angeles and New York, he opened an architectural practice in Tokyo, in 1985, with offices in Paris and New York, and has designed projects worldwide from private houses to large-scale museums.

His cardboard tube structures have aroused enormous interest. As long ago as 1986, he discovered the benefits of this recyclable and resilient material that is also easy to process. Shigeru Ban built the Japanese pavilion for the Expo 2000 world exposition at Hanover – a structure made of cardboard tubes that measured 75 meters in length and 15 meters in height. All the materials used in the structure were recycled after the exhibition. He developed a genuine style of "emergency architecture" as a response to the population explosion and natural disasters: the foundations of his low-cost houses are made of beer crates filled with sand, and the walls consist of foil-covered cardboard tubes. A house of this sort can be erected in less than seven hours and is considerably more sturdy than a tent.

Shigeru Ban is currently a Professor of Architecture at Keio University and is also a guest lecturer at various other universities across the globe; his works are so exceptional that he was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture in 2005. "Time" magazine describes him as one of the key innovators of the 21st century in the field of architecture and design.

Shigeru Ban has designed projects such as Centre Pompidou Metz and Nine Bridges Golf Clubhouse in Korea. Current projects include new headquarters for Swatch and Omega in Switzerland.

 

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Published on: September 3, 2013
Cite: "The New Tamedia Building by Shigeru Ban" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/new-tamedia-building-shigeru-ban> ISSN 1139-6415
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