Residential and commercial building Bernold

Client: The Bernold family

Location: Bahnhofstrasse 7, 6300 Zug

Service: 1,125 m²

Number of apartments: 3

Completion: 2005

Award: Award for good buildings in the canton of Zug

The ‘Bernold house’ is in a prominent location and is a simple, compact and expressive building with five full floors and two basement floors. The limited space has been overcome by implementing the most generous, flexible usage structure possible: Raiffeisenbank Zug has set up its new branch on the ground floor, the first and second floors serve as office space and the top two floors house three maisonette apartments with sea and mountain views. The first basement level is reserved for storage and technical facility rooms, while the second basement level is used as a parking garage. It is directly connected to the existing Vorstadt multi-storey car park and can also be accessed via the latter. The architectural expression of the new building is characterised by a precise, monolithic cube in dark-coloured concrete, which appears to float above a retracted plinth in chromium steel and glass, and over a column-free arcade. The building thus confidently makes its presence known on Bahnhofstrasse. It also enhances the existing buildings around it due to its precise shape and the deliberately contrasting materials and colours, which was of particular concern to us, especially considering the construction of the Zuger Kantonalbank from 1955-1958, an important building from the early days of our architecture firm.