Campo Winterthur
2023
Image by Nora Walter
Assemble and Weyell Zipse were shortlisted in a major international competition to produce a design for Campo - a new headquarters for both the Foundation for Art, Culture and History (SKKG) and Terresta in Winterthur, Switzerland.
Campo will be a 23,000 square metre mixed use complex that contains: a large archive of cultural objects owned by SKKG, offices for SKKG, Terresta and others, apartments and a range of public uses including galleries and restaurants.
'Raid the Icebox' by Andy Warhol, image: RISD Museum
Image by Nora Walter
We arranged the building around a generous internal courtyard, raised above the surrounding ground in order to accommodate the archive. This is the central space of the scheme providing a communal environment in which tenants, residents and public visitors can all congregate, mix and watch a film, do some gardening or have a coffee.
The Cortile del Belvedere by Donato Bramante, image: RIBA
The Cortile del Belvedere by Donato Bramante, image: Étienne Dupérac
The public aspects of the programme are arranged within a building that faces onto the Eulachpark.
Drawing by Weyell Zipse
The other aspects of the programme form the other three sides of the courtyard.
Two of the existing buildings - a large office building, and a small domestic house are retained and reused within the scheme.
Image by SKKG
Image by SKKG
The building is a hybrid structure using concrete where it is required such as the archive and basement structures, and then combining this with timber structure at the higher levels - exposing this where possible such as in the two-storey tall hangar space.
The public building has a load bearing stone colonnade at its base and then above a system of compressed hemp panels on a timber structure. Elsewhere timber structure is infilled with compressed earth blocks or existing corrugated metal sheeting is reused as cladding.