Schönbühl Shopping Center

Not far from Lucerne’s old city center lies Switzerland’s first shopping center, designed by the architect Alfred Roth. Schönbühl Shopping Center was completed in 1967 as an innovative urban construction project, and is connected to the attached residential high rise built by Alvar Aalto. Seen in the context of today’s large shopping malls, Schönbühl is a well integrated regional center which attracts visitors from surrounding areas. 

Our intervention focused on three main aspects: improving the flow of visitors and increasing the clarity of the layout, constructing a new main entrance and creating an atmospheric interior design that encourages visitors to shop. The most important architectural and design-related measures were carried out on the main entrance and in the central interior court yard. Thanks to its symbolic character, the new projected roof over the main entrance creates a distinct urban space. With its broad edge line, the roof lends the building’s protruding cubic units a funnel-like shape, guiding the visitors into the inner. The new interior design optimizes the center’s qualities as a place to spend one’s free time. The new lighting concept, the color schemes, the meticulous choice of materials and especially the integration of sunlight − which even reaches the lower shopping level through the expanded central interior courtyard − create a pleasant shopping experience in an up-to-date, attractive environment.