Immigration administrative center

By Caterina Testa - 2 October 2019
Knauf has participated in the project

Following the changes in Swiss Confederation laws on immigration and political asylum, the Swiss Migration Secretariat, already present in Chiasso, Switzerland’s Italian-speaking canton, found itself in need of larger premises to handle the added administrative burden. The offices had to go from 10 to 100 workstations within a short timeframe - the brief required the new building to be operational in 13 months. It was also specified that the new building would be a temporary structure as the employees were to be transferred to a more permanent facility in 2024. Despite the urgency and temporary nature of the new offices, the building nonetheless had to meet the stringent energy requirements and achieve Minergie certification like any other building in Switzerland. Swiss architects Floriani and Strozzi designed an extremely simple functional volume that while meeting the requirements of rapid build, dismantling and future reuse, is also an aesthetically pleasing contemporary architecture. The new immigration administrative center is located in the southernmost sector of Chiasso. Part of a mixed residential, administrative and manufacturing area south of the railway, it borders on a strip of woodland separating the city from the frontier with Italy. Seventy meters long, the administrative building runs parallel to Via Milano and the River Faloppia on an east-west axis, its main façades facing north and south. It is 13.5 m wide, and its distribution system is a double-loaded central corridor optimizing office space over the three above-grade floors. In order to comply with the strict client requirements, the building was designed as a series of prefabricated elements fastened to a metal structural frame, which as well as energy efficient allows swift assembly, dismantling and reuse. A basic office module of 2.70 x 5.5 m is repeated 25 times on either side of the central corridor, the only exception being a projecting volume on the south side, which on...