Vacheron Constantin Headquarters and Factory, Switzerland

摘要

Turning to architecture to help beef up a company's corporate identity seems to be an obvious strategy. You only need to look at Manhattan's Woolworth, Chrysler, and Seagram Buildings to see how this has worked smashingly well in the past. But these are skyscrapers. If the company is moving to a light industrial zone near Geneva, Switzerland, it means making an impact with less height in an amorphous landscape of highways and factories. The Vacheron Constantin Headquarters and Watch Factory at Plan-les-Ouates demonstrates, nevertheless, that such image enhancement can be done with a showy, sophisticated finesse. Designed by Bernard Tschumi, a Swiss-born architect with offices in New York and Paris, the tautly crafted carapace of shiny, perforated steel seems to float above a town also staked out by Piaget, Rolex, and Patek Philippe.