Facade renovation Escher and Lavater house Zürich, 2005

The facades of both administration buildings from 1964 were equipped with a rear-ventilated marble cladding. Increasingly visible damages as well as the end of life cycles of windows, doors and slat blinds made the insurance company conduct a study commission in 2002 for the total renovation of the building envelope. Aside from the architectural and urbanistic integration into the surroundings, appropriate economic interventions were planned. From a typological point of view, the area is an offshoot of the 19^th century perimeter block developments in Zurich's Enge district. Typical for this neighbourhood are the representative office buildings, which occupy entire neighbourhood blocks and are framed by hedges, trees or parks on the street side. In addition to the structural and thermal optimization, the facade renovation will bring about a paradigm shift at the urban planning and architectural level. Both buildings are reset to their primary physicality and thus “radicalised”. A jointless, homogenous and plastered solid facade replaces the multi-part stone cladding, dissolved by joints. The formerly facade-level window bands are transformed into deep, sculptural incisions. Both building structures are painted in a nuanced green colour. They receive a cubically cut linden hedge base extending to the parapet of the 1^st floor. This takes up the theme of the green plantings from the surroundings and creates a scale distortion reflecting the neighbouring building proportions.