Making

What Can Building Services Engineering Learn from Fruit Growing?

To protect fruit trees from frost damage on cold spring nights, they are artificially sprayed with water. As strange as it may sound, when this water freezes, heat is released, which creates the frost protection effect.

Anything but relaxed…

…that’s how you could describe the construction of our soccer stadium in Lausanne. Concrete is placed under tension there to achieve greater stiffness. But did you know that the prestressing forces at our stadium in Lausanne are roughly equivalent to the force of one of the Space Shuttle’s solid-fuel side boosters (about 12 MN)?

SPMT

Self-Propelled Modular Transporter—Have you ever heard of it? This fascinating transportation technology is used to move ultra-heavy loads, such as oil rigs—or even houses. In our competition entry for the Viktoria Cooperative in Bern, we proposed using this very technology to relocate a house.

A Building Straight from the Printer

A “slanted truncated elliptical cone” serves as the defining feature of the exterior space of our Maison de la Santé in Biel. For reasons of efficiency, this complex geometry is constructed using precast concrete elements. A giant printer produces one element in 120 minutes.

Intellectual Property in Architectural Practice

:mlzd Partner Daniele Di Giacinto on Copyright and Intellectual Property in Everyday Planning

Armadillo

The first mockup of the Maison de la Santé’s solar facade looked like a shimmering armadillo. Depending on the perspective, the angled solar panels — each with varying levels of reflectivity — also resembled the gills and scales of fish. However, the final design will feature a revised, streamlined version with larger and more efficient solar modules.

Peace as a Disturbance

The word “Peace” is inscribed in various UN languages into the flawless surfaces of our interior design at the UN Headquarters in New York, appearing as subtle “disturbances” in the material’s smoothness.

The customer center is also a school

Our photographer, Alexander Jaquemet, has captured the diversity of the Nussbaum AG site in Trimbach. From the forge to the robot, the photos showcase a place where people come together, exchange ideas, share knowledge, and where history and innovation converge.