The headquarters of Lindt & Sprüngli, the Swiss chocolatier, founded in 1845, are located near Lake Zurich on the outskirts of Switzerland‘s most populous city. The firm‘s long and successful history of producing quality chocolate manifests creations from Lindt & Sprüngli as the epitome of quality chocolate. Its products are available in more than 120 countries worldwide. They are sold by 28 subsidiaries in more than 500 of its own stores. Lindt & Sprüngli‘s HQ features a factory, warehouses, an office building, and the new gateway to the campus, the Lindt Home of Chocolate, which is financed and operated by the Lindt Chocolate Competence Foundation. This new flagship building is a striking, contemporary counterweight to the eclectic assemblage of buildings. Set to become one of Switzerland‘s most visited buildings, this multifunctional experiential space combines a user-focused, mixed-use program in an exceptional new type of civic architecture.
Elevating the visibility of the Swiss Chocolate industry to new heights, it is built to seduce visitors with the many charms of chocolate. It features an interactive, immersive exhibition about chocolate, a research and development facility for future chocolate recipes, a production plant, a chocolate shop, a cafe, and offices – all connected by spiraling staircases and cascading walkways crisscrossing a vast atrium. In its center, a dramatic, nine-meter high, golden chocolate fountain was developed by Atelier Brückner, also authors of the exhibition. Designed by Christ & Gantenbein, the Home of Chocolate parallels Lindt & Sprüngli‘s factory site‘s logic, history, and urban structure: A classically composed, industrial box, in dialogue with the surrounding factory buildings. The facade, consisting primarily of red brick, references its neighbors in an abstract reinterpretation based on a readymade industrial product that is manually grafted into a specific construction element. The south-eastern corner is cut out and interrupts the otherwise simple volume. Clad with white, glazed brick adorned with golden letters, this quadrant opens a public square right at the Lindt Home of Chocolate‘s entrance.
