Types of mandate
Historical project
Dates
1958-1964
Location
Petit-Saconnex
Architectes
Georges Addor, Dominique Julliard, Honegger
Frères associés à Louis Payot
Owner of
the project
SI avenue de-Budé Hôtel Intercontinental SA
Project
Located on the former Budé estate, this residential complex for international public servants consists of a tower and five large blocks placed on stilts. Winding through the middle of the lot, Avenue de-Budé allows you to move from one building to another. The 600 apartments in the complex adopt the same style as a typical Geneva four-room traversing apartment and can contain up to seven rooms when joined in pairs or in the case of the end apartments. The entrance halls are in keeping with the standing of the buildings: decorated with numerous sculptures, paintings and reliefs commissioned for the occasion from renowned artists, they form virtual greenhouses designed as an extension of the park, beneath the built volumes.
The architectural expression of the buildings, reflecting the building systems used, is reduced to the white grid formed by the horizontal lines of the floors and the vertical lines separating the living rooms. The facades of the buildings are largely glazed and made of wooden frames set back from the loggias. Simplicity and economy of means characterise this carefully implemented architecture. The shopping centre inserted between blocks B and C blends into the large landscaped areas of the site. The flat roofs house swimming pools and dense vegetation that creates the sense of an arborescent skyline.
Marking the entrance to the site, Intercontinental Hotel serves as an interface for the whole of Budé as well as a visual landmark in the district of international organisations. With 17 floors and 400 rooms, it was the largest building in Switzerland at the time of its construction. Placed in a prism covered with aluminium curtain walls, the rooms are grouped around a hub of services and distribution and enjoy an exceptional view. However, the addition of an oversized entrance canopy and the restructuring of the reception areas have caused the low space, on which the tower rests, to lose its original qualities.
Philippe Grandvoinnet, “Ensemble résidentiel De-Budé et Hôtel Intercontinental”, in Catherine Courtiau (dir.), XXe - Un siècle
d’architectures à Genève: promenades, Patrimoine suisse Genève, Gollion, Infolio, 2009, pp. 370-371
