Historicizing the Vevey Campus

“One striking element that appeared to me when searching for satellite images and street views of the building was the strong dialogue Tschumi had built between Nestlé and its surroundings. Located in the small town of Vevey, the building is surrounded on one side by Lake Leman and on the other side by the mountain range "Les Dents du Midi". It was then inevitable for us to take such a picturesque location as a revealing element of Nestlé’s corporate statement.” - Y.R. (www.yassinerachidi.com)

No architecture exists in a historical vacuum. This project reminds the viewer of this fact by overlaying drone shots of Nestlé’s headquarters with images of the historical conditions that informed its modernist architectural style and generated the wealth used to build it. Not unlike the “scientific” and “universal” essence of modernity, drone imagery is often considered impartial because of its technically-mediated distance, separating the subject, the human image-maker, and observer. Here, the view of Nestlé headquarters from the drone is disrupted with a blur of images that re-locate the campus within the historical systems of power that have enabled it to come into being.

Photo courtesy Fiona Hager

“Over the course of this project, we attempted to historicize different aspects of Nestlé’s corporate architecture across different geographies and time periods; splintering a single object – and the conveniently cohesive narrative of modernity that came with it – into divergent associations. Though we forewent any cartographical output per se, critical cartography has informed the entire process of this project, leading us to imagine linkages across the neat divisions of disciplines, histories and geographies.” -M.R.

“Modernism is not ahistorical. Using Nestlé’s headquarters as an example, we explored how the architectural typology of the corporate campus borrows from history, sharing characteristic functions and hierarchies found in European palaces and châteaux. These spatial similarities can be attributed to the hierarchical power structures and internal social dynamics shared by centralized corporate administrations and monarchies alike. Both combine the need for maintaining a stratified organizational structure with attempts to establish a distinct internal culture of shared norms, values, and rules that govern all day-to-day interactions.”

From the authors: “The architecture of Nestlé’s headquarters in Vevey is a quintessential example high modernism. Such stylistic reductionism was a deliberate point of departure for our research. Nestlé’s headquarters is emblematic of the corporate office typology that flourished during the mid-twentieth century. This architecture is characterized by an intentional placelessness, which especially suited the transnational character of the postwar corporation. The go-anywhere universalism of the International Style shed all ornamental embellishment, expressing itself instead through an aesthetic obsession with the technicity of construction. This trend took shape within the context of a postwar Europe that was reeling from mass destruction. The momentum of wartime industry was redirected towards reconstruction, which needed to be urgent and pragmatic. The baggage of tradition was quite willingly jettisoned, giving way to a new, tabula rasa conception of architecture.”

“This project provided us the opportunity to explore the expression of power in corporate contexts, through an architectural lens on the Nestlé Headquarters – relating to the building itself, the landscape, and the subsequent impact on its surroundings.“ - J.J.