Bjarke "Yes Is More" Ingels, the prolific Lego proponent and Game of Thrones fan at the head of Bjarke Ingels Group, has unveiled a spiraling expansion to the HQ of Swiss luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet. Called Maison des Fondateurs, the latest in the New York and Copenhagen-based firm's ever-lengthening list of museum commissions is an intertwined, spiral-shaped pavilion conceived, according to a press release, as "a storyline" for visitors, built to guide them "through a linear sequence of spaces and events, from the entrance through lounges, galleries and workshops, to the attic of the heritage building in the workshop where it all began."
The 25,800-square-foot pavilion is meant to be "seamlessly integrated into the local landscape" of Le Brassus, Switzerland with underground and grass-covered sections. The coiling-up, double-spiral design was reached to solve what BIG describes as the primary dilemma of the project: "narrative structure" that "calls for a succession of galleries and workshops, while the logistics of operations requires the workshops to be interconnected."
Ingels, who claims to have "have always admired Swiss architecture for its flawless craftsmanship," as well as Swiss buildings that "sometime make you suspect that they have been built by watchmakers," takes the opportunity to wax poetic about the links between watchmaking and architecture, which both involve "the art and science of invigorating inanimate matter with intelligence and performance... imbuing metals and minerals with energy, movement, intelligence and measure – to bring it to life in the form of telling time."
· All Bjarke Ingels coverage [Curbed National]