News Covering 3.8 hectares, "the Bellevue site stirs the emotions with its hundred year old cedars, its brushwork of interwoven trees, its old wooden cottages, its relief and its view of the lake. It is quiet like a property that has anachronistically escaped urban development. It would be nice if it stayed that way. It would be nice also to live there." It’s this contradiction that Jean Nouvel has tried to resolve in his conception of the new headquarters of the Richemont group, east of Geneva, to the north of the CFF railway line. And the least that can be said is that he has brilliantly risen to the challenge set by the group (to renovate the cottages in their original style and to erect three administrative buildings with a floor space of 8,900 m2 able to accommodate 350 employees) by "impregnating Bellevue with an architecture that permeates the landscape but is also permeated by it".
A wellspring of transparency with its 12,000 m2 of windows, the contemporary architecture chosen by Jean Nouvel favours harmony of materials in keeping with the countryside. For example, on the glazed surface of interior partitions the architect has reproduced the surrounding landscape in the form of graphic prints of the forest in four shades of grey.
Complete with a 96-seater auditorium, a restaurant and private rooms, the Bellevue site brings together for the first time all of the support functions that accompany the development of group brands, particularly in the following fields: audit, corporate affairs, finance, property, legal, intellectual property and human resources. Richemont occupied the building in January 2006, after 19 months of work. The official inauguration took place only last month however, after landscaping work was completed.
October 19, 2007
