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full advantage of daylight for skiing or hiking difference. The new building repeats certain
could enhance productivity. Interacting with lines but in a modern way, to suit the same
the local community will broaden horizons, landscape.
whether by learning traditional skills such as
cheese-making or doing something useful for Our Palais was a hub of its era – no mere suite
them like conservation work. of offices, it was always intended as a creative
space for meeting and negotiating. The new
A visitor could arrive with just hand luggage, building, for example, was expressly designed
using the local speedy internet to work in this to encourage these creative ‘out of meeting’
special ambience. People could visit singly or encounters, and much of its beauty comes
in groups, and network during their stay or from the easy flow between areas, and its
not as suits them. many nooks for informal discussions.

Looking at the renders, we saw not a modern So those are the palaces of the present and
hub but a real palace in the Alps. Of course, we past, what about the future? Well, going back
already have a palace of our own: our Palais to the Foster building, the Alps give a different
des Nations in Geneva. It was proposed for an perspective to the idea of a palace. The sheer
architecture competition in 1926, when 377 height will give another dimension when
architectural projects were submitted along people stand in the transparent “sky” terrace,
with the project by the great Le Corbusier. The with the mountains as walls and the sun as
vision of the Palais was very different at that ceiling. One of the renders looks almost like a
time: “un palais de verre” by the modernist fairy tale, and we immediately wondered - can
Le Corbusier, or a more classical “palais de this mountain palace be for us, our “Palais”
pierres” by the majority of architects. As it was for Geneva International, or simply a “Palais
not possible to select a single winner, a group of Internationale” in the Swiss Alps?
five architects oversaw the Palais construction
(see the book by Jean-Claude Pallas Pallas We have always felt that here in Geneva
“Histoire et Architecture du Palais des Nations; International, we need a sort of “third place”.
(1924-2001); and our earlier articles in the The Palais is a partial hub – it has office and
magazine UN Special). other spaces, but it is still a workplace, not a
home. No matter how many creative meetings
It is strange to look now at the contrasting we have, at the end of the day we all go back to
newer building H, with its ultra-modern homes and hotels. Receptions in the evening
energy efficient structures. It was designed cannot compensate for longer interaction in
by totally different generation of architects, a different environment – eating and living
but to us it somehow echoes the spirit of together. This might not be suitable for all
Le Corbusier, as both buildings represent a conferences, but it could be fruitful for some
perfect architectural match despite a century’s working group meetings, and even talks.

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