Unione Banche Svizzere

The historic building of UBS stands in the heart of town, and thus the architect’s intervention had to be particularly sensitive to its significance as part of Lugano’s most prestigious piazza. An analysis highlighted that much of the building’s potential had been sacrificed by its dark façade and by the metal canopy that cut across the side facing the piazza, degrading the entire complex without contributing to its architectural quality. Therefore, first of all, the intervention restored the façade’s original features, highlighting all its architectural elements, and removing the canopy. The dark color was replaced with a more luminous one that restored the building’s dignity and seemed to brighten up the entire piazza. The remodeled façade gives special prominence to the balcony of honor above the new entrance to the building, specifically created to replace the narrow one that had stood at the corner. In fact, closing the previous entrance resulted in cleaner, more linear corners. The visual impact of the façade was further intensified by reinstalling the ornamentation and molding. Skillfully restored, they create a play of light and shadow which, together with the variety of the stones, generates an intriguing chromatic movement. Meanwhile, inside the building, which was completely emptied and rebuilt, the new non- conventional distribution of the spaces reveals a special effort to provide contact with the outside, using forced perspectives created by walls that converge in the framing of the windows facing the street, the piazza and the lakefront.