The heart of the new Swisscom building in Bern is the atrium which up until now has only been used as a transfer zone. A soluti- on is needed to repurpose the atrium.

The atrium acts as a lung to ventilate the building’s appended departments. Like vines, nets stretch across the atrium to channel productive energy and connect the various departments together into one center. Knowledge, ideas and experiences can be exchanged on these newly created levels. The network facilitates communicati- on between employees and provides them with the opportunity to deviate from prede- termined paths and directions in order to discover individual paths on their own.

A staircase extends from the ground floor

to the roof terrace where I placed a garden for the employees to relax and recharge. The staircase greets Swisscom visitors at the entrance area of the atrium. Via the spiral staircase, people can cross several stranded layers of the network or descend from the sky ladder at any time by walking on the nets. Individual platforms hang suspended in the nets and provide meeting spacesthroughout the light-flooded atrium.