Swisstower

Project Burckhardt+Partner Zürich

Living in the vertical city

What things might look like in the year 2020. A report by Eva Mackert in the Tages-Anzeiger of August 16, 2001.

Actually, Lara Croft would have liked to live on Platform 4 and to work on Platform 3. The fact that things are just the other way around has something to do with her pay – for each floor higher, the rent rises 1000 Swiss francs. But it also has to do with the fact that her employer, Boutique Prado, established itself ten years ago on two stories of Platform 4 and will not even think of moving farther down. The reason: From here you can see the tip of the Matterhorn. Ninety percent of Prado’s clients are wealthy tourists, and the boutique allows them to kill two birds with one stone: Buying their designer clothes here spares them the trip to Zermatt.

At least Lara Croft can see the Bernse Alps from her apartment. That is quite a thing together with all the other benefits that the 160 meter tall Swiss Tower offers: a restaurant on the roof of Platform 6 and the Food Hall just below it, which is three times as big as that at Harrods in London. On the boulevards surrounding each Platform, Lara often strolls around, and she enjoys it. Here, in the shade of trees, she meets colleagues and friends. She can find everything in the Swiss Tower that she needs for her daily life as well as her nights out: laundry; wellness, fitness and beauty centers; interior furnishing stores; discos; bars and three cinemas. Her bank is on Platform 1.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has relocated its Architecture department to the middle of downtown Zürich in order to study the development of Zürich-West on site.
An exhibition room in the basement of the Swiss Towers, linked directly with Zürich’s main station, documents the history of Zürich’s first skyscraper, designed by the two architects Heinz Moser and Roger Nussbaumer from Burckhardt+Partner Zürich. A gigantic obstacle race... .