Bjarke Ingels Group designs spiral-shaped watchmaking museum

(Iwan Baan/CASACOR)

A literally twisted building, whose interior looks like falling down Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole: this is the Atelier Audemars Piguet Museum . Designed by architect Bjarke Ingels - founder and director of the international company AD100 BIG -, the space is a museum, workshop and archive for the Swiss luxury watch brand Audemars Piguet.

(Iwan Baan/CASACOR)

Located in the small town of Le Brassus – where the watchmaking was born and maintains its headquarters – and nestled in the landscape of the Vallée de Joux, the museum is housed entirely within a double spiral building, in which the green roof becomes a walkway over the facade of curved glass walls.

(Iwan Baan/CASACOR)

(Giovanni Emilio Galanello/CASACOR)

Ingels envisioned the project as a metaphorical extension of an Audemars Piguet watch. “You have a spiral, almost like a spring hovering over your head,” explains the architect. The 2,400-square-meter building allows visitors to move intuitively through its circles concentric sections of exhibition space. A honeycomb-shaped brass and steel panel lines the exterior to provide shade when needed.

(Iwan Baan/CASACOR)

“In watchmaking, a lot of the effort goes into what you might call getting the maximum impact with the minimum amount of material,” says Ingels. “The idea is similar to this structure, and how glass carries the entire roof over our heads. , the museum is almost an open work. Nothing is hidden, all the elements you see are functional and are part of the concentric circles.” Museu; Suíça; Relógio

Via Architectural Digest

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