Asset light: BURRI

The recent renovation of the Swiss National Bank in Bern was no small undertaking. Located on the city’s Bundesplatz, or Federal Square, and completed in 1912, the august institution’s rejuvenation required painstaking planning, patience and consideration.

In equal parts conservation, restoration and reinterpretation, the project was executed by Bern-based architects Aebi & Vincent, who, for the building’s new lighting, partnered with two leading Swiss specialists: lighting-design engineers vogtpartner and manufacturer BURRI.

The latter has rightfully secured itself a reputation over its 100-plus years in business as a light-footed, solutions-oriented expert in elements for public space. Which is why it’s become a go-to partner for many a landscape architect and planner. ‘Our skillset is broad and we work fast,’ explains managing partner Martin Burri, great-great-grandson of the company’s original founder.

Not afraid to embrace innovative thinking, production technologies and materials, even if they’re drawn from other industries, Martin puts a large part of the manufacturer’s ongoing success to its size: ‘We’re in the middle. Big enough to have enough of a range of competencies, yet small enough to be agile.’

What’s perhaps less well-known about BURRI is the fact that it has, for some time now, been applying its rich, accumulated know-how to interiors projects like airports and train stations, with a primary focus on lighting and signage. The company’s expertise and service have always been as much of the product as the physical products it fabricates, but now, with a new, in-house architectural-lighting department in place, there’s a direct transfer of that expertise from the outside realm inside.

When it came to the SNB, it was a dynamic relationship from the start. Charged with developing a lighting concept for the entrance and corridor areas, as well as for the conference rooms – which included designing the luminaires themselves – vogtpartner worked in partnership with Aebi & Vincent to ensure their creative vision dovetailed with that of the architects.

BURRI, meanwhile, having won a tender, was commissioned with turning poetry into prose by implementing everything – from technical development, through electrical engineering, to installation.

It was an iterative process, to say the least, certainly not short on challenges and with some serious prototyping that involved rigorous in-situ testing. ‘The various lighting requirements, which included indirect, direct and diffuse light, had to be simulated before final implementation in the product,’ explains BURRI’s resident lighting expert and managing partner Fabian Frei. The need to build in a future-proofed cleaning and maintenance concept and the desire to keep the value chain entirely Swiss served only to up the stakes.

‘It was no small task,’ adds Frei, ‘to find someone who can mill large, nickel-plated aluminium parts precisely. Not to mention someone who can produce hand-blown, satin-finish glass with an additional vertical facet cut.’

‘Their competence in developing technical solutions and the quality in constructing and implementing bespoke luminaires was where BURRI’s expertise showed itself most clearly,’ says Andreas Gut, lighting designer at vogtpartner. Perhaps nowhere more emphatically than in the special chandeliers it produced for the SNB’s hallowed conference rooms, in particular its legendary Salon bleu...

Here, two striking suspended elements, which, in total, comprise 388 upward-emitting LEDs and 208 downward-emitting ones, along with an array of special lenses and almost 900 structured glass components, take pride of place. Don’t be dazzled, however: BURRI was also responsible – and not just here but across the entire lighting project – for developing all of the control panels and the uniquely curved circuit boards.

For the architects, meanwhile, BURRI’s participation illuminated the very design process itself. ‘We were able to profit from their great know-how,’ explains Aebi & Vincent interior architect Bernadette Werlen, ‘and in doing so, optimise our designs. For them, it was a case of “Everything is possible!”’

© Architonic