Six years after the conclusion of the architectural competition, the completion of Audemars Piguet’s watch museum “La maison des fondateurs” in Le Brassus (Jura) is imminent. The building, with its remarkable spiral shape, should have celebrated its opening in the upcoming summer. Unfortunately, the coronavirus thwarted the schedule: future guests and the numerous people involved in planning and construction now have to wait until the end of the year before the interior of the museum can be discovered.
The architecture and design journal Wallpaper* gives a first promising impression of what visitors can expect in the middle of the glass spiral. Jasmine Audemars, chairwoman of the board of directors, is also quoted in the article. “It’s a complicated building. At first, we thought it was crazy, then we just thought, let’s do it”, is her description of the joy of making decisions before the project was launched. Our façade and structural engineers, who, together with BIG Architects and CCHE Lausanne, accompanied the creation of the museum from design to execution, were infected by this enthusiasm.