Nau2

Raiffeisen’s flagship branch on Zurich’s Kreuzplatz dissolves traditional barriers between customer and employee, creating a new type of ‘open bank’, a space of encounter. Advanced technologies make the banking infrastructure largely invisible; employees access terminals concealed in furniture elements, while a robotic retrieval system grants 24-hour access to safe deposit boxes. This shifts the bank’s role to providing a light-filled, inviting environment – an open lounge where customers can learn about new products and services. This lounge feels more like a high-end retail setting than a traditional bank interior. Conversations can start spontaneously around a touchscreen-equipped info-table and transition to meeting rooms for more private discussions. This info-table not only displays figures from world markets in real time, but can also be used to interactively explore the history of the Hottingen quarter, or simply to check the latest sports scores.

Elegantly flowing walls blend the different areas of the bank into one smooth continuum, spanning the customer reception at the front to employee workstations oriented to the courtyard. The plan carefully controls views to create different grades of privacy and to maximize daylight throughout. The walls themselves act as a membrane mediating between the open public spaces and intimately scaled conference rooms. Portraits of the quarter’s most prominent past residents like Böcklin, Semper or Spyri grace the walls, their abstracted images milled into Hi-macs using advanced digital production techniques. While intricately decorative, the design grounds the bank in the area’s cultural past, while looking clearly towards the future.

Photographs: © Jan Bitter, Zurich