Quai Zurich Campus

In good company

Welcome to Quai Zurich Campus

Quai Zurich Campus is a place designed to bring people together. It shows our values, our passion for modernity and sustainability, for collaboration and friendship. You will find in this book stories about our past, present and future, from the people who have shaped our thinking at Zurich to the values for which we stand. Quai Zurich Campus reflects how we have evolved and who we are today. It combines old and new architecture, with one overriding principle – encouraging people to meet other people. It provides a place where we come together from all over the world to develop ideas and gain inspiration. This is where the heart of the company is. All of us together make Zurich a unique group, with strong values based on a successful past and open to shape a sustainable future for everyone. Quai Zurich Campus is one of the most sustainable buildings in the world; we want to be here for the next generations. Even this book is fully carbon neutral. Welcome to our home. Welcome to Quai Zurich Campus.

Content

Improving lives, changing communities and building businesses and characters. It can all start with a single person.

Photo: Anne Morgenstern

Florentina Gojani

35 | Tiny house aficionada

Alexander Zehnder

75 | Co-founder 2000 Watt Society

Danielle Brassel

40 | Sustainable investment analyst

Antonio Atorino

54 | Sustainability manager

Lukas Böni

32 | Founder of planted meat substitute startup

Judith Haeberli

31 | Ceo and founder, urban connect

Go with the flow

In a basement, unseen, around the clock, is a low-energy, highly efficient miracle that keeps people in Quai Zurich Campus cool or warm and does it sustainably with lake water.

Building the original pipe for lake water. Photo: Zurich Archives

Quai Zurich Campus’s heartbeat is a loud one, but don’t worry. Unless you venture into a chamber below street level, you’ll probably never hear its engines whining at about 100 decibels (disco strength).

The twin heat pumps located here are an active reminder of Zurich’s sustainability goals. The engines drive two pumps that circulate lake water through about 100 kilometers of pipes installed in the ceilings of the Campus buildings, at a rate of up to 500,000 liters per hour. The system works by circulating warm or cool water through pipes hidden in the ceiling panels throughout the Quai Zurich Campus.

The ceiling panels also reflect light – another energy saving characteristic – and dampen noise. There is no draft, and no worry that stale air will be recirculated. Fresh air is drawn in at a rate of about 300,000 cubic meters per hour, in a way designed not to create drafts. The system is thus helping Zurich to achieve the highest platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. And it is in line with Zurich’s status as the first insurer to sign the ‘Business Ambition for 1.5°C Pledge,’ which requires companies to set science-based targets aligned with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

The heat pump system works on the principle of heat transfer. As transferring heat is more efficient than burning fossil fuels, it requires less carbon-producing energy and creates fewer emissions.

Neither fish nor swimmers are at threat

Switzerland, with virtually no fossil fuel resources, was a pioneer in heating pump technology. Installation in 1938 of such a pump in Zurich City Hall fed by the River Limmat created a sensation at the time it was introduced. By 1945, there were around 35 heat pumps in operation in the country.

Zurich the company introduced its first heat pump in 1947, which was deactivated in the years before Quai Zurich Campus underwent refurbishment. In Zurich’s case, the new heat pumps installed during the building site rebuild completed in 2021 draw water directly from Lake Zurich, fed by a pipe hidden 11 meters below the lake’s surface. The pipe is designed to prevent other miscellaneous, random objects and fish or swimmers from being inadvertently sucked in. The lake temperature varies from about 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit) in early spring to about 16 Celsius (61 Fahrenheit) in early autumn, making the lake water ideal for heating and cooling purposes.

HFO-1234ze is under pressure

The newly installed system will help reduce Zurich’s energy consumption to a fraction of what it used to be, according to Christian Polke and Alexander Küng at the company Polke, Ziege, von Moos AG. Their company was responsible for the sophisticated concept, design and technical engineering at Quai Zurich Campus.

To understand how heat transfer in a heat pump works, consider how refrigerators function. For cooling, the coolant is expanded. Putting pressure on the coolant creates warmth. Zurich’s system will use a refrigerant referred to as ‛HFO-1234ze,’ considered to be an environmentally friendly organic compound, which unlike earlier types of refrigerant, doesn’t deplete the ozone layer and has a minimum impact on global warming.

Installing a state-of-the-art heating and cooling system in our headquarters underscores our commitment to being as sustainable as possible. It’s something we are proud to make public, even if we prefer to keep our heat pumps out of sight in a relatively soundproof place.

Inside the real heart of Quai Zurich Campus. Photo: Stephan Birrer

A magnetic filter, or modern art? Photo: Stephan Birrer

Delivering a vacuum device for the old pump in 1947. Photo: Zurich Archives

Cooling distribution that is really cool. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Delivering hope

Z Zurich Foundation is an independent charitable foundation that Zurich founded to mark its centenary. Gary Shaughnessy has been its Chair since 2017.

Food for the homeless: ZZF Chair Gary Shaughnessy and Antonio Bico, CEO Zurich Portugal. Photo: ZZF

The Z Zurich Foundation has always been about Zurich’s people making a difference in the communities in which we live and work, but that ambition has grown into creating a fairer, more sustainable society both locally and globally. This means tackling the issues that really matter to us and society – the dramatic impact of climate change, the challenges in a modern world to maintain mental wellbeing, and the often stark need for social equity. The Z Zurich Foundation uses Zurich’s abilities and actions to prevent and preempt catastrophes, while helping people to realize their full potential, no matter where they started or where they are now. It is core to Zurich’s culture and reflects the commitment and passion of Zurich’s people who make the Foundation’s work real and relevant. While the Foundation is both independent and has no profit motive, the role that it can play in creating a more sustainable and fairer society is a crucial part of both the Zurich culture and in reinforcing what the Zurich brand stands for. Z Zurich Foundation Chair Gary Shaughnessy, from Reading, is also Chair of Parkinson’s UK.

Insurers focus on risk. How does the Z Zurich Foundation approach risk?

Gary Shaughnessy: We aim to make people more independent. The Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, funded by the Foundation, for example, combines Zurich’s insurance expertise with knowledge of other specialists to help communities in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Mexico, and Nepal better face floods.

What’s been achieved so far?

The flood program has given about 300,000 people more certainty and control over their lives. We’re now extending into more parts of the world and helping communities to prepare for other hazards like wildfires.

What does the Foundation do to improve people’s everyday lives?

‘Tackle your Feelings’ is one example. Started in Ireland, the campaign, run by Rugby Players Ireland and Zurich with the Foundation’s support, uses rugby players as role models to talk about mental health issues to youngsters. This has had a dramatic, positive effect. We’re looking to support the program in 16 more countries by the end of 2024.

How do Zurich’s employees get involved?

Since 2013 Zurich employees have volunteered nearly one million hours within their communities, including mentoring young people, renovating schools and houses, and fundraising.

With so much already achieved, what’s next?

We will continue to support the most vulnerable to adapt to climate change, look after their mental wellbeing and realize their potential in a rapidly changing world. And we will further strengthen our collaborations, engage more with governments, and support all Zurich employees to actively contribute to their communities.

What’s your favorite aspect of the ZZF?

Energy! That includes people both inside and outside Zurich and the Foundation, and especially those we support. I am always struck by how positive people can be, how they find the energy to deal with setbacks. And, I love learning from the brilliant diversity of people across the planet.

What challenges do you see for ZZF’s next 50 years?

Could we have imagined, 50 years ago, the challenges we face now? While we can’t see into the future, creating a sustainable, learning society with opportunity and empathy seems fundamental. So does harnessing the incredible potential of progress for all. Protecting the fragile planet, valuing and embracing our differences, and supporting those in need will remain priorities.

Flood resilience team in Mexico visits the pristine upstream area of a river in Chiapas. Photo: ZZF

Recycle, re-use, repurpose

Just some of the ways Quai Zurich Campus reduces its environmental impact. Little things add up to make a big difference.

From reducing energy to re-using food, there are a lot of ways to minimize the impact on the environment and even, in some cases, benefit the planet through reducing resources and making the most of what is available. Quai Zurich Campus sets high standards in being a user-friendly place to work, while reducing its environmental impact. Ways it does this include everything from depending on renewable energy to reducing chemicals used to clean. Sit back, relax and enjoy a high degree of efficiency coupled with interesting ways to make a difference. Climate-conscious facilities management system can co-exist with comfort. And keep in mind; this is only a partial list!

Deals on meals

In wealthy countries astounding volumes of food are wasted every year – an estimated 2.6 million tons wind up in Swiss bins each year. We can do better. With our ‘Click and Collect’ service, Quai Zurich Campus employees may pre-order meals of leftovers. They enjoy good food at home, at great prices. Food remnants of lesser quality are disposed of as kitchen waste. They go to a company that uses them to produce biogas energy.

Mooove!

Being more active is good for us. With coaches from TuricumFit, Quai Zurich Campus offers free fitness classes to get employees moving, and encourages dynamic sitting and standing at desks. It’s not only people who need exercise. An organic dairy farm in Uster near Zurich that supplies milk to Quai Zurich Campus believes in keeping its cows moving, too, encouraging grazing to promote bovine health over maximum milk yield.

Anti-bin brigade

To discourage refuse, there are no garbage bins under the desks at Quai Zurich Campus. As a lot of waste is generated by plastic containers, on-site the café services will provide only re-usable containers and biodegradable cups for takeaways. As a matter of course, stringent recycling will be enforced. Waste paper is collected in containers and disposed of by a company that recycles paper after it’s shredded.

Water everywhere

Rainwater storage tanks on the roof capture precipitation used for sanitary systems, while motion-sensor faucets in restrooms eliminate water waste. Zurich’s energy-efficient heating pumps in the basement rely on the water of nearby Lake Zurich that is circulated pipes to keep the property pleasantly warm or cool without costing a fortune, or harming the planet. Drinking water selections? Try tap water.

Powerful savings

Roof-top photovoltaic cells add to energy from 100-percent renewable sources. Energy-efficient lighting and appliances and motion-detection sensors cut power use and sensors curb artificial light in daytime. Most desks are near natural light sources. Master switches stop energy drain. Energy dashboards remind people to use power mindfully. And in the gym, the fitness equipment produces its own energy.

Just chill

When summer comes, Zurich can be a hot place. But Quai Zurich Campus has ways to keep cool while forgoing the negative environmental impact of air conditioning. Besides cool water circulating through pipes to lower room temperatures, plants on the roof reduce the heat island effect. Special windowpanes filter out excess sunlight to reduce the temperatures inside. So, no matter how hot it is, you can chill.

Where’s the parking?

Everyone can be a climate hero. But how do you encourage people to adopt sustainable behavior? Sometimes with an approach using both carrot and stick.

The garage offers just 43 parking spaces. Photo: Stephan Birrer

According to what is called Marchetti’s constant, whether people walk, drive, cycle or take public transportation to work, the average commute for most is about 30 minutes each way. The Swiss conform to the rule almost precisely, with an average one-way commute of exactly 30.6 minutes, according to the Swiss Federal Statistics Office.

What is not captured in the statistics is whether the commute is enjoyable or not, perhaps depending on how the average commuter feels about cars honking and many people sitting in crowded trains screaming into mobile phones. And, more important, whether people consider the impact of their commute on CO2 emissions.

Taking public transport, cycling or walking, or even car-pooling and ride-sharing can reduce emissions.

More climate friendly

Zurich is working hard to make travel to and from Quai Zurich Campus practical, convenient, and sustainable. “The goal of companies today must be climate- neutrality,” says Stefan Schneider, a partner at Planungsbüro Jud AG, which served as Zurich’s consultant in planning the mobility concept for Quai Zurich Campus. Zurich’s operations have been ‘carbon neutral’ on a global basis since 2014, a calculation that has recently starting to include emissions produced by employee’s commutes. Quai Zurich Campus aims to encourage sustainable commuting.

Encouraging good habits

Those visiting the garage will see that to reinforce its message of climate neutrality, it offers just 43 parking spaces, most of them for visitors and renters. The garage will offer charging stations for electric cars, and the executive fleet will be all-electric. It also provides disabled options. Employees who still want to drive will be encouraged to use park and rail solutions.

According to a survey taken before the Quai Zurich Campus opened, only about 10 percent of Zurich’s employees planned to drive to work, while fully 70 percent expected to use public transportation. Around 10 percent of headquarters’ employees planned to cycle, walk or even jog to work.

For the fitness-minded, Quai Zurich Campus offers a bicycle station, lockers and showers. Employees may choose to work from home some of the time, which reduces emissions tied to commuting. Zurich already introduced a flexible approach to work in 2016. That made it easier to keep employees safe while operations shifted to home office during the 2020-21 pandemic. As things get back to normal, Zurich’s hybrid working model still allows employees to work remotely, side-by-side with those in the office on any given day. One thing difficult to replicate virtually is the humble commute. For some, it is an enjoyable ritual that adds structure to the day and allows them to transition from one environment to the other. A commute, or at least a transition, can be good for our wellbeing.

Dodging bicycles

Some experts even recommend that people working from home build a ‘fake’ commute into their routine. The exhilaration of running for trains, observing strangers, dodging cyclists, hearing birds singing (or strangers yelling into their phones) can all offer us a moment or two to mentally de-stress and prepare for wherever we are headed next.

One of the charging stations for electric cars. Photo: Stephan Birrer

All in the family

Meet the hard workers keeping Quai Zurich Campus sustainable, 24/7.

Carbon-eating machines at work in Quai Campus Zurich. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Local regulations require that at least one-third of Quai Zurich Campus’s open spaces must be planted. It’s a climate-friendly solution. Plants trap CO2 in the air. They help to keep things cool in summer and conserve warmth in winter. Historical preservation also demands that the landscaping done around Zurich’s oldest building match its heritage-site status.

Traditional plantings include Amur maple trees with leaves that flame bright red in the fall and Japanese maple, a delicate haiku of a tree, as well as Full Moon maple with rounded leaves. Hydrangeas, popular for over a century, add a note of color, as does a perennial with tall pink flowers and an unlikely name – Hungarian bear’s breeches. Another plant with delicate flowers is called, improbably, goat’s beard. And then there’s a plant with small blossoms called fingerleaf Rodger’s plant.

During the fall, stop by Alfred Escher Street and sniff. You might think you smell gingerbread. Actually, it is a substance released by the leaves of the katsura called maltol that gives this plant its other name – caramel tree.

The inner courtyards provide more green, but here the challenge was to find suitable shade-lovers. One such is spiky mondo grass, distantly related to asparagus. Besides water lettuce in the fountain, there’s also Virginia creeper and honeysuckle clinging to a trellis, a summer banquet for bees and hummingbirds. Inside the buildings, over 500 planters contain rock gardens with stones from Andeer, and the Maggia valley, and cacti from Mexico, South America, and South Africa. You can also pay a visit to the cacti arboretum down the street.

Did you know that cacti can horde CO2, so much so that some people call them carbon-eating machines? So, you can see that even plants from different families are on the same team in terms of sustainability.

Our lives and those of others are inextricably linked. We act as individuals, but there is power in joining forces.

Photo: Florian Kalotay

Corine Mauch

61 | Mayor of Zurich

Niklaus Riegg

40 | Inventor of the #zürilove playlist

François Rapeaud

60 | Agent and volunteer for children’s rights

Elisabeth Schlumpf

54 | Director of Voliere Zürich

Aleksandra Gnach

49 | Professor of media linguistics

Suba Umathevan

38 | NGO Director

Suba Umathevan

38 | NGO Director

Suba Umathevan fled Sri Lanka and arrived in Switzerland when she was just two. She has made it her life’s work to fight for children’s rights – particularly girls’ rights. Z Zurich Foundation supports her projects in Nepal and Nicaragua that make it possible for children to advise their villages on flood protection.

What are you passionate about?
Equality, social justice and – of course – girls’ rights. Empowering girls is especially important, as they face particular disadvantages. Investing in their education can bring about lasting change.

What does community mean to you?
Being there for one another, and being mutually supportive.

A rock, a fountain or a table?

What led Zurich to place a 24-ton block of sandstone in a courtyard? The desire to have it overrode any hesitation about whether it was even possible to get it there.

The world’s largest sandstone single-block fountain. Photo: Florian Kalotay

It is probably the largest block – table, fountain, or planter, for it can be all of those – ever created out of a single piece of sandstone. Just cutting it in the quarry not too far away at the other end of Lake Zurich was a challenge. The work was designed by Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten AG, for which the fountain is a natural extension of the building, cut of the same sandstone used on the exterior and courtyard paving. Realizing how tricky the job would be, the quarry that delivered it, Müller Natursteinwerk near Eschenbach, Switzerland, began work already in 2018, even before the contract was finalized. To keep it level so that the enormous stone wouldn’t break under its own weight, as it was cut it was set on supports in the middle of the quarry. There it remained amid all the other work going on around it, as ornamentation with a hand-held stonecutting machine was completed and it could be moved.

As far as the designers are concerned, the stone might be perceived as a fountain or a planter, but it can also serve as a table. The pattern cut into the stone mimics the one on the courtyard tiles. If you use your imagination, perhaps you can also imagine a sort of lace tablecloth draped over it, carved into the rock, such as one in a still life. Inspiration for the design came from a tablecloth that still impresses viewers today, part of Dutch painter Floris van Dijck’s masterpiece, Still Life with Cheese, circa 1615. But unlike those still-life tables, ours is also filled with water. The idea of a ‘water table’ is not new. A very long table with something like a stream running through it can still be found in the sixteenth century Villa Lante gardens in Viterbo, Italy. Part of an allegorical water system that included cascades, fountains and dripping grottos, that table in Italy might have offered a practical way to chill food, or, perhaps even a fanciful means of floating dishes downstream to guests.

A cool respite, a decorative centerpiece. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Stones excite emotions and even fly

Those invited to dine at Villa Lante must have been delighted. Less delighted were the employers of the man who commissioned it. He later made contributions to the local hospital and church to atone for any unseemly excess. By contrast, most people are delighted by Zurich’s fountain. After all, the Villa Viterbo’s ornamental stonework can’t boast of flying, as Quai Zurich Campus’s fountain can; to keep it from breaking under its own weight, Zurich’s great stone was only freed from supports in the middle of the quarry when it came time to move it. Getting the stone in one piece to its fi nal position in an inner courtyard required equal parts determination and bravery. It arrived at night to avoid traffic. It came on a truck, all 24 tons of it, an occasion presided over by teams of logistics experts, and eagerly anticipated by local media. Then, suspended by a steel I-beam from a crane, it was hoisted over a sevenstory building. Lowering it into the inner courtyard required extreme precision, carried out millimeter by millimeter with the help of lasers to position it exactly to line up with plumbing pipes. Now in its final home, 12 meters long and one meter wide, with a deep channel in the center, it also resembles on some level a village fountain, or watering trough. But one filled with plants.

Water lettuce creates a cool micro-climate

The plantings are an ingenious solution to meet the required areas of greenery in the three courtyards (232 square meters). Bearing in mind that the inner courtyard where the fountain is placed receives very little direct sunlight, it is planted with shade-loving Pistia stratiotes, or water lettuce, which should also help to create a cool micro-climate. So along with its many other attributes, the fountain, table and/or aquatic planter will be a good conversation piece. On hot summer days, make sure to get a table near it and admire the unique workmanship. But please don’t eat the water lettuce.

The fountain is 12 meters long and one meter wide. Photo: Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten AG

It is planted with floating water lettuce. Photo: Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten AG

The pattern on the edge recalls a tablecloth. Photo: Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten AG

Covered, the fountain becomes a table. Photo: Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten AG

Infinity underfoot

The tiles in the inner courtyards form patterns of infinite variation, truly a mathematical marvel.

The Penrose pattern in the courtyard. Photo: Stephan Birrer

The Penrose pattern that served as the basis for design of the Quai Zurich Campus courtyard tiles takes its name from British mathematician and Nobel Prize winner Roger Penrose, who in the 1970s, as an exercise, developed patterns that produce infinite variation. As you continue to study the design, notice that the tiles consist of only two geometric shapes: a thick diamond and a thin one. The visual aspects of such patterns and how the eye perceives them is a concept that has preoccupied generations who are fascinated by the mathematical principles expressed in the Alhambra Palace’s mosaics, for example, or the puzzle-like drawings of interlocking shapes by Dutch artist M.C. Escher.

Selecting the Penrose pattern for Zurich’s courtyard was a way of acknowledging the science of mathematics, which is also at the heart of insurance. If you look closely, your eyes will start to pick out literally hundreds of five-pointed stars. Look again. You will also see circles. One way to understand how Penrose plays with your mind is to compare the tiles at Quai Zurich Campus to a conventional design of square tiles. Walking across squares, they would all look exactly the same. Wherever you stood, you would only see squares. With Penrose designs, something wonderful and unpredictable happens. That is, infinite variation. From the higher floors of Quai Zurich Campus, the patterns become even clearer, helping to unify the style elements of the Campus buildings.

Now that you know the secret of the tiles, you might contemplate how abstract mathematical principles shape our lives. Ask yourself where the balance lies. The decisions we take, the choices we make each day affect everyone else’s lives, too. Like the pattern of the tiles in our courtyards, interlocking and reforming. They remind us that when all is said and done, as individuals we are inextricably interconnected, each and every one of us making up part of a greater whole.

The color of Zurich

The sandstone used for Zurich’s oldest buildings is a local phenomenon.

The sandstone used in Quai Zurich Campus’s oldest and newest buildings, called Bollinger, was already in demand back in the Middle Ages. Many of Zurich city’s most recognizable landmarks are at least partly of Bollinger sandstone, including the Grossmünster and Fraumünster churches, the historic Zurich City Hall, and the eighteenth-century Guildhall zur Meisen. Bollinger sandstone, named after the area where it is quarried not far from Zurich, just down the lake, consists of quartz, mica and feldspar bound by calcite. Feldspar is light pink, which can give it a brownish tinge. If you had been around over 20 million years ago, you might have met a young rhinoceros; parts of it can be seen today in the Natural History Museum of St. Gallen. Its rare fossilized skull was all that remained, discovered in the quarry supplying Zurich’s sandstone. Treated well, sandstone buildings, unlike baby rhinos, can last through the ages.

Damage done through restoration

But sandstone is vulnerable to the elements. Acid in air pollution dissolves the calcite binding the fine grains. Road salt condenses on the stone, causing it to flake. Joints expand and contract, letting in moisture and weakening it. Humans also do damage in the name of protecting the stone. A waterproofing chemical applied years ago actually caused the sandstone used on the roof of Zurich’s oldest building to decay and crumble. Eric Voigt, a restoration specialist at Bianco und Kiesalter AG, and his team worked for over two years to restore and preserve Quai Zurich Campus’s stone. Besides sandstone, buildings on the site contain many other types of stone: shell limestone, and a dark limestone called St. Triphon from Western Switzerland. Renovators ran into a problem when they discovered that the quarry that had supplied the original St. Triphon stone had closed. Replacement stones were found in Spain. There is also a hard metamorphic granite called gneiss from Ticino used around the bottom of the oldest building and balconies. Over a century ago this stone was probably shipped via the Gotthard Tunnel to Enge station, a route still new when work began on Zurich’s first building. Perhaps the worst thing one can do to beautiful stone is to apply a sticky silicon paste to discourage pigeons. Voigt’s team had to remove a lot of pigeon paste by hand. Another thing that surely nobody would do today? Cut chunks out of the polished Sardinian breccia marble decorating the foyer of the former Vita building. During restoration, holes gouged out were plastered over and painted by hand to look like marble. If someone were to carelessly clean it, the painstaking handiwork would be wiped away. Zurich’s buildings will probably withstand the test of time, unless, of course, someone tries to waterproof the stone again, apply pigeon paste, or clean the marble with harsh chemicals.

A worldly village

Enge’s lake shore is called the Pfnüselküste – ‘sniffles coast.’ Getting less sun, its residents are supposedly more prone to colds. But Enge is in many ways quintessentially Zurich.

Sniffles coast? Really? Enge’s lake shore – with Quai Zurich Campus – belies its nickname. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Enge might be considered Zurich’s neighborhood with a chip on its shoulder. Looked down on by some as the Sniffles Coast because it gets a little less sun than the communities on the opposite shore of the lake, it seems to need to prove something. There’s the impressive Muraltengut mansion built by a local building commissioner who, it is said, wanted to disprove critics who insisted he knew nothing about building. Or the Enge villa, long gone, that served as a clubhouse for Swiss men who wore cloaks and carried daggers and kept gondolas in a stylized moat, preferring to think of themselves as Venetians. Enge lacks royalty, but has its own castle, Schloss Sihlberg, built in 1898. The Rietberg Museum, set in an extensive park, houses an outstanding collection of Asian art, and includes a green glass cube (the Emerald), designed by Swiss architect Alfred Grazioli and Quai Zurich Campus’ architect Adolf Krischanitz.

We do it better, we did it first!

One of Switzerland’s most beloved writers, Gottfried Keller, was for a time a resident of Enge. So, too, was industrialist and politician Alfred Escher, a classic over- Sniffles coast? Really? Enge’s lake shore – with Quai Zurich Campus – belies its nickname. achiever: he served multiple times as head of the Swiss national assembly, founded a railroad, promoted setting up Zurich’s technical ETH university, was instrumental in establishing a bank, a life insurer and a reinsurer, and his vision contributed to founding Zurich, the company. He died before he could take the train journey through his arguably biggest project, the Gotthard Tunnel. Enge can claim another important we-do-it-better, or at least, we-did-it-first milestone: Zurich’s first squatters. When these occupied buildings set for demolition in the early 1970s, Zurich employees got used to passing banners with slogans like Renters’ Struggle – Class Struggle and die Enge wird enger! When singing Enge’s praises, one other thing should not be overlooked. Perhaps because it gets a few minutes less sun than trendy Seefeld on the opposite shore, Enge residents also feel they have more to prove. Enge’s birthrate is in creasing, while over on the sunny lake shores the population has declined. Perhaps Enge’s residents are inspired by a few extra minutes of romantic twilight. Or else – it would be in character – they want to prove that on their side of the lake, the Sniffles Coast, they do everything a little better.

A matter of life and death

Zurich is made up of people. Some have poignant stories, including one that can be pieced together from two letters that describe fear, despair, and ultimately express heartfelt thanks.

Richard Jung (left) during the difficult war years. Photo: Zurich Archives

The story begins with a letter dated August 25, 1946 from Richard Jung, who had recently been appointed Zurich’s managing director in Germany. It is addressed to Hans Farner, responsible for Zurich’s German business at its headquarters in Switzerland. The letter describes in detail the hardships of establishing business in post-war Germany: “Someone has stolen both our best typewriters... .” Then, before closing, Jung writes in a few heart-felt lines: “You have done more for me than I could have hoped... .” It’s hard to associate Jung, whose photo shows a practical, serious-looking man, with any such emotions, but what the letter refers to was nothing other than a matter of life and death, and a narrow escape. Had Farner not intervened, Jung's beloved wife, and his two children may have perished, and Jung himself might not have survived.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in the 1930s, they introduced atrocious laws persecuting Jews. Nazis also put German businesses under tight Party surveillance. Zurich’s Berlin office got its own ‘ombudsman,’ a man called Bernhard Schmidt; what he was, in fact, was a Nazi spy. Schmidt was a fanatic and he set about his work with repugnant passion. In 1934 he denounced a Zurich employee for making fun of a patriotic Nazi song. The man was packed off to prison. In 1941, Schmidt exposed one of Zurich’s German employees as being of Jewish descent. The man died of heart failure while under arrest. In 1944, Schmidt struck again, exposing a woman in Zurich’s office as being half-Jewish. She was seized and eventually murdered in a concentration camp.

But Schmidt had an even bigger target in mind: no less than Richard Jung himself, then-deputy manager of Zurich in Germany. Schmidt seized on the fact that Jung’s wife, Kläre, a converted Catholic, was born a Jew. Alarmed by the developments in Germany, back in Zurich, Hans Farner sent an urgent appeal to Zurich Chairman August Leonhard Tobler. Tobler signed a directive to provide help. In 1939, with Zurich’s assistance and support, Kläre and her two children moved to Switzerland where she was looked after by none other than Hans Farner and his wife Agnes.

Meanwhile, back in Berlin, Schmidt continued his despicable work, going so far as to enlist a Nazi sympathizer working for the Swiss gas company to spy on Kläre to see if he could learn if she was keeping in touch with her husband, who, for appearance’s sake, had become her ex-husband. Though he tried, Schmidt failed to uncover anything to incriminate Jung.

After the war ended, the Jungs were reunited. But there is one final letter to mention. This one is addressed to Germany’s post-war police. It details Schmidt’s odious actions, signed by witnesses including Richard Jung. At last, Jung could turn tables and have Bernhard Schmidt, the denouncer, denounced.

Board minutes, 1938: Zurich to “pay for family’s accommodation.” Photo: Zurich Archives

“More for me than I could have hoped.” A telling letter, 1946. Photo: Zurich Archives

Photo: Zurich Archives

We are all travelers. It is the journey that matters, and the direction, as much as the ultimate destination.

Photo: Simon Habegger

Tatjana Buser

29 | Strategic assistant and competitive skater

Günther Vogt

64 | Landscape architect and professor

Vreni Spoerry

83 | Zurich’s first female board member

Mario Greco and Kip

62 | Group CEO
10 | Family pet

Patrick Hess

44 | CEO of Schindler Aufzüge AG Switzerland

Zerom Kiflay

23 | IT specialist

Do we need an office?

Over-rated or underappreciated, an office is and probably will remain as a symbol and public face of a corporation. But spaces, like faces, can change.

What new ideas will this innovative space inspire? Photo: Stephan Birrer

The office occupies the nexus between our aspirations and dreams, bookending the jarring start of Monday mornings, banter around the coffee machine throughout the week, and the golden glow of a job well done on Friday. But do we need an office? New ways of working, made possible by technology and a more flexible approach to clocking in and out, are erasing the once-sharp definitions of what constitutes the workplace, especially when we may also work from home or wherever technology allows. Yet the office is more than walls, windows and a canteen. It seems to prove Karl Marx’s maxim that “society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations.”

Less philosophical perhaps, but more to the point, as other German-speakers have noted, life isn’t a pony farm. Sometimes we just need a place to focus and get the job done, and an office fits the bill. While the office traditionally has served the movers and shakers among us, those with big desks and the antechamber dragon that keeps supplicants at bay, most of us require real workspaces. What workspaces should be, however, is increasingly a blend of many different things.

People today can work from anywhere and everywhere. A repurposed phone booth, a car, or maybe just a quiet corner in a café. The concept of an office is limited only by the imagination, and it has always been trendy to re-imagine workspaces. For example, one major technology company has ski gondolas in one of their offices and a climbing wall in another. A Dutch firm has tested one-person offices that look like giant bird houses.

A comfortable chair and a place to think in peace

We do need offices. Physical ones. Most employees want to work from home some of the time. But they also want the option to work a few days a week with colleagues, if only to escape needy pets and restless children. Even so, increasingly, offices must serve a variety of individual preferences and meet different demands to satisfy the humans who work in them. “I prefer to stay in the same area, and where I work has to feel a bit like home,” says one employee at Quai Zurich Campus, who focuses on financial results. Someone else likes to brainstorm over coffee. A third demands only a comfortable chair and a place to think in peace, while yet another craves creative surroundings and the opportunity to be inspired.

A new way of working requires trust

But why have an office at all, when even hiring people has gone, in some cases, virtual? One new hire at Zurich unable to travel due to a pandemic lockdown in 2020-21, was onboarded via remote communications and made to feel part of the team with a welcome video and casual online water-cooler banter. Zurich adopted a work-from-home policy during the COVID-19 lockdown, and it worked. More to the point, its people worked. The flexible approach was also instructive for the future. As regular workplaces return to normal, some employees on any given day are still working remotely and some in the office. Through this, we may see each other for what we contribute, rather than how often we dine with the boss. This new way of working also requires trust.

“Leaders will need to have more trust in their people, as they will not supervise them in the same way,” says Stefan Kröpfl, a senior analyst who heads a team in Zurich’s Group Life insurance business. Amid all these changes, he believes that having an office is still necessary to facilitate creative processes.

What matters is having a unified whole personified by buildings that reach out to employees and communities. That includes Quai Zurich Campus’s open spaces designed not only with staff, but also with the community in mind, such as courtyards, an auditorium, and a café open to the public. This requires coordination and planning by architects and interior designers, carpenters, technicians and IT specialists, as today’s offices are multi-functional affairs serving many different purposes and audiences.

“The boundaries between work and daily life are increasingly blending. We need to rethink how we integrate spaces,” says Nicole Maurerlechner of Iria Degen Interiors AG, which designed the Quai Café, which is open to the public as well as to the Zurich staff. “After all, nobody knows exactly what the future will bring.”

The office as a stage

Another sometimes overlooked function of the office is entertainment value. It provides a stage for human dramas that unfold on a daily basis. One need look no further than the short story published in 1907 by Swiss author Robert Walser satirizing a typical Monday morning in a Swiss bank where pairs of clerks sit together like “pairs of shoes” counting the minutes until lunch hour.

The office has provided colorful stories through the ages. Before there were Dilbert cartoons, there were clerks in Imperial China who evaded night work by complaining of stomach ailments, so that their duty roster acquired the nickname ‘Journal of Suffering From Stomach Trouble.’ In Tsarist Russia, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s nihilist narrator in Notes from the Underground, a retired civil servant, lampoons the behavior of boorish and overly ambitious former colleagues. Charles Dickens’ novels abound with downtrodden ledger keepers and small-time clerks, from shivering Bob Cratchit to the rag dealer Krook who marvelously and mysteriously self-combusts. Franz Kafk a’s eerie writings were very likely influenced in part by his work in an office as a lawyer for a workmen’s accident insurance institute in Prague.

“The boundaries between work and daily life are increasingly blending. We need to rethink how we integrate spaces. After all, nobody knows exactly what the future will bring.”

The office is also a means to experiment with human behavior, and the outcomes are instructive. In the 1990s, a new phenomenon took hold: hot-desking. At the outset, a popular U.S. advertising agency tried to introduce the concept of no desk, no paper, and no shelves. It didn't work. It just drove staff to despair. Employees began using trunks of their cars as filing cabinets. Others hid documents in office corners and couldn't find them again. Fortunately, technology today is friendlier to office nomads. At Quai Zurich Campus, phone apps let people into buildings and tell them which desks happen to be free. Zurich employees might also give permission to let others know where they are while at work through a ‘finder’ app.

An office is part of us - just as we are part of it

An office also makes us feel we matter. And it gives us a chance to present our better selves, though perhaps less formally, after we had grown used to seeing each other working virtually in our kitchens and living rooms during the pandemic lockdown. “One consequence of the COVID lockdown is that it seems to have largely killed off ties,” as Gillian Tett observed in the Financial Times.

An office is part of us, just as we are part of it. An office is as much a state of mind as a physical space. With the advent of hybrid work models, and capabilities presented by new technologies, what the office becomes could be just about anything. Perhaps the only constant will be that people will continue to redefine what an office is and why we need it. That’s something that can only be done collectively, consensually, in a workspace that brings people together, that is fun and functional, where bricks and mortar and in-person encounters complement virtual interactions. An office is everything, it is nothing. It is all of us, together, doing our best.

Combining past and present

With its dramatic prism façade, Quai Zurich Campus stands out and still fits with its surroundings. The project’s challenges were part of the attraction for Austrian architect Adolf Krischanitz.

Quai Zurich Campus architect Adolf Krischanitz. Photo: Elfie Semotan

Zurich’s Museum Rietberg, the Superblock in the town of Winterthur in the Swiss canton of Zurich, or laboratory facilities on Novartis’ Campus in Basel: Adolf Krischanitz has designed many impressive buildings in Switzerland. But renovating and developing the Quai Zurich Campus headquarters posed the challenge of his lifetime.

Are you proud of the Quai Zurich Campus?

It was a massive project posing every conceivable challenge an architect could face. The urban planning aspect was hugely important. The new building has an impact on the city’s skyline. And there were many other aspects – the existing edifices, their history, the height of the buildings and so forth. Harmonizing all that and creating a uniform whole was a very complex undertaking. Zurich dedicated itself to the project and courageously rose to the challenge.

What was the most difficult aspect of integrating new into old?

The hardest was to understand how the listed buildings already on the site and the new structure would interact. The new structure is slightly taller. The solution was to intersperse building compositions and open spaces. The spaces produce a dynamic point of reference where old is juxtaposed with new. This coordinated approach helped to join the old and new buildings into a unified whole.

Why does the combination of glass and sandstone work so well?

The local Bollinger sandstone façade along Alfred Escher Street expresses an urban character and references Zurich’s Grossmünster church and other well-known landmarks. You have a traditional material set off by an innovative one: the crystalline glass façade creates a dynamic contrast to the stone. The glass façade provides an airiness that enabled us to build very compactly without the construction becoming too heavy or too confined.

What makes the glass façade unique?

The glass façade was born of a desire for transparency and innovation, but in this historical context, it must do more than merely reflect. The prismatic surface has the quality of reconstituting its surroundings: it doesn’t simply mirror the neighboring buildings, the prism breaks the reflections, transforms them and creates something new – a tried and tested way of underlining the beauty and brilliance of the material while capturing the light.

What is especially Swiss about Quai Zurich Campus? Or indeed, un-Swiss?

It is a good combination: international, on Swiss foundations. Swiss buildings tend to be of high quality. Zurich also places an emphasis on values. I constructed the newest building in a 'U' shape to complement the traditional structures already there. But it’s primarily the foundations that set it apart and make it a part of Zurich.

Has the way we combine old and new changed?

We need to have greater respect for the past. These days, we tend to have solitary buildings that work individually but don’t harmonize with their surroundings. Traces of the past should be visible because that’s the only way to establish an identity. Long-term sustainability unites the past with the future. That’s important for an institution like Zurich, which can look back on a long history while setting its sights on the future.

What should people feel when entering Quai Zurich Campus?

Spaciousness, versatile durability thanks to robust, high-quality materials, and freely accessible open spaces. It should feel like a harmonious whole in which no single element is more important than another. No contrived construction or polished technical installations, no color or material used in isolation. The aim is to create a balance between diverse elements that ultimately merge, creating a cumulative, intangible effect. In its overall harmony, the space should seem to be a continuum, a flow that captures all the senses, as it were – and encourages us to look ahead.

Signs of the times

Can we get rid of it? No! Discoveries in Zurich’s archives.

A company’s archives houses its memories. Zurich’s corporate archives – all 2,600 linear meters of them –contain not only files and documents, but also about 500 truly special objects collected by the archive team over the years. Each of these objects has a story to tell.

Kiddy car
The classic kiddy car is fire-engine red – but this edition of the cult toy is Zurich blue (2018).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Hangover remedy
When clubs were still known as discos, a VITA agent put together this anti-hangover kit (circa 1990).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Seismoscope
Zhang Heng invented the first earthquake detector in 132 A.D. This replica belonged to a Zurich risk engineer.
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Bunny
Zurich to love: this cuddly bunny key fob was a client giveaway in 2015. Cute, isn’t it?
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Golf set
Former CEO James Schiro’s passion for golf was apparent in the Zurich putting kit (2007).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Metal sign
In 1895, Zurich (at the time still with the ü) advertised for its accident and liability insurance on metal signs.
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Game kit
'Stock, Wyys, Stich' cards for Jass. The popular game was an essential part of the Zurich game kit (1978).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Leather-bound book
When General Manager Heinrich Müller-Jelmoli retired, employees presented him with this book (1900).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Key ring
Similar, but different: the logo with the angular letter Z – like on this key ring – was used between 1972 and 1996.
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Mobile phone
No apps, but in a sophisticated color palette: Nokia mobile phone with the Zurich logo (1997).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Copying machine
Okay, copy that. This copy press was used to reproduce important correspondence (circa 1900).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Golden nose
Didn’t anyone want it? The golden nose was devised as a prize for a competition – but never awarded (1991).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

COVID-19 kit
Cleansing wipes, hand sanitizer for employees who came to the office during the pandemic (2020-2021).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Lion sculpture
Board meetings were held in the Mythenquai offices under the gaze of this lion (probably first half of the 20th century).
Photo: Henrik Nielsen

Diamonds are forever

The glass panels on Quai Zurich Campus’ newest building break and refract light, as though capturing images of our past, while offering a glimmering vision of the future.

Tons of glass that appear lighter than air. Photo: Stephan Birrer

The glazing on the outer façade of the newest building at Quai Zurich Campus offers a glimpse of our past and future, a kaleidoscope combining traditional and modern elements. Quai Zurich Campus’s most iconic feature is also a marvel of construction. Weighing over 200 tons, the façade appears to hover weightlessly. In fact, based on the original design, the façade was supposed to have been different, but in a way few would have noticed. The glass panels were first to have been attached to stainless steel frames. Instead, Josef Meyer Stahl und Metall AG, the company that made them, proposed using aluminum. It took some convincing, but given the weight, the lighter metal, which still offers strength, proved to be the best choice. Even with aluminum, the 824 elements still comprise what building experts might call a static challenge.

The glass naturally has a greenish tinge according to the suppliers, Flachglas Gruppe. The individual panes were produced at a temperature of approximately 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 Fahrenheit), each consisting of two pieces of glass heated and pressed together. A coating inside reflects sunlight that helps keep the building’s interior cool. Screen-printed strips of enamel were used to conceal the joints, another challenge that required engineering ingenuity. Many modern miracles went into making the visionary, bold façade. But don’t forget the real wonder – behind the glass façade, people are working hard to bring about miracles for those who rely on Zurich, using a blend of traditional knowledge and new ways of thinking to create the future.

A reordering of old and new. Photo: Stephan Birrer

A few of over 800 panels in the façade. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Jobs give meaning to our lives. Our daily actions allow us to change the world, or even create a new one.

Photo: Cyrill Matter

Iria Degen

51 | Interior designer

Thomas Grossenbacher

62 | Project Manager, Quai Zurich Campus

Saiful Chowdhury

37 | Father, Manager and Cultural Mediator

Marina Cardoso

36 | User Experience Consultant

Mai-Thu Perret

41 | Artist

Jacqueline Dubois

59 | Zurich General Agent, Heinrich Brandeis AG

Drawing with light

The darkest shadows and the brightest places of human existence can be found in the works of an exceptional photographer and environmentalist.

Kafue National Park, Zambia. Photo: Sebastião Salgado

The photographer is literally someone drawing with light. For Sebastião Salgado, a photographer might also be one who sheds light on the true nature of things. His photos, characteristically in black and white, illuminate people's souls and tell stories about lives shaped by fate and environment. They demonstrate the terrible impact of humans on nature and each other. But there are also glimpses of hope. Having won nearly every major photojournalism prize, recording what his eyes saw and his heart felt, took an immense physical and mental toll. Salgado, exhausted, sought renewal in his native country of Brazil. He and his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, in 1998, founded an ambitious project to try to regrow part of one of the world’s formerly greatest forests. They began on almost barren spot in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Where the Mata Atlântica, or Atlantic Forest, had once stretched over 3,000 kilometers inland along Brazil’s eastern coast, little remains today. But some forest can be saved. Taking over the family farm, the Salgados founded the Instituto Terra. It has already planted over 2.5 million trees and is involved in other ecological projects, a small beating heart bringing life back to the forest. Zurich is not only sponsoring the planting of one million trees within the Zurich Forest Project. Zurich has also purchased a small but representative sample of Salgado’s work: five images out of millions.

His pictures on display in Quai Zurich Campus include the photo of a gold mine in Brazil where swarms of men reduced to writhing creatures pursue a living prising gold from a giant open pit. This photo caught the attention of German fi lm maker Wim Wenders and led him to a meeting and ultimately to make a two-hour film about the photographer, together with Salgado’s son, Juliano. In the film, Salgado compares the gold mine to a scene from the dawn of time. He “could almost hear the gold whispering in the souls of these men.” His documentary photos include one taken in Kuwait in 1991 of an oil well set ablaze during the war with Iraq, when hundreds of such wells were set on fire. The heat was so intense it caused a camera lens to deform. His photos also capture nature and humans in some kind of equilibrium, such as one taken in the Sahara of a lone figure in the sand dunes. Another shows a forest on Siberut Island in West Sumatra, Indonesia, an image that at first appears mundane. Then the eye picks out a tiny human of the Mentawai tribe, climbing a tree to collect durian fruit. It’s an image both humbling and heroic. There is also a picture of a river in Kafue National Park in Zambia against a backdrop of fog; a primeval landscape. While every photographer sees the world in a different way, when viewing Salgado’s photos displayed at Quai Zurich Campus, perhaps you, too, will adjust your own personal view of the world.

Sebastião Salgado has traveled in over 120 countries for his projects. Photo: Renato Amoroso

Regrowing the Atlantic Forest, Brazil. Photo: Sebastião Salgado

Oil well ablaze in Kuwait. Photo: Sebastião Salgado

Lone figure amid dunes in Tadrart, Algeria. Photo: Sebastião Salgado

Nonsense of the best sort

South African artist William Kentridge’s great tapestry in our main entry hall contains a magical energy. Closer inspection reveals images of ledgers and even insurance policies.

‘L’amiral cherche une maison à louer,’ William Kentridge’s tapestry, can be admired in the Alfred Escher Street entrance. Photo: Stephan Birrer

The absurd, “with its rupture of rationality – of conventional ways of seeing … is in fact an accurate and productive way of understanding the world... .” Recall these words of William Kentridge as you admire his great tapestry in Zurich’s main entrance hall. Coveted by collectors, his tapestries, drawings, sculptures, animated films, even stage sets, seem at first to defy logic. But look a little longer and they begin to make sense. His tapestry in Quai Zurich Campus is three meters high and eight meters wide, and one of six site-specific works commissioned on the property. It dominates the wall at the end of an 80-meter long corridor. Entitled ‘L’amiral cherche une maison à louer’ (The Admiral seeks a house to rent), it takes its name from a Dadaist song poem performed in the infamous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916. When the work was first created, civilized society was still reeling from the mechanized brutality of World War I. The premiere must have been impressive. It included people on stage reciting, singing, and banging drums. Kentridge’s works often feature collages. To produce his tapestries, he relies on the Marguerite Stephens Tapestry Studio outside Johannesburg. The production team for Zurich’s enormous tapestry required 18 people, including the weavers. All were female except for a few male goats that provided the mohair. The weaving studio recreates Kentridge’s collages on a vast scale, right down to the texture of torn paper and pins. Stand back and admire the tapestry. Imagine it’s a procession, a picnic of the Dadaists. Go with them. They’re waiting for you. If you listen, they might speak to you. Be open to their message, listen with your senses, and respond with your heart.

‘The Migrant,’ a work by Indian artist Jagannath Panda on display in Quai Zurich Campus. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Art is omnipresent at Quai Zurich Campus: the painting ‘Pet’ by Armenian artist Armen Eloyan hangs in the Innovation Hub. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball’s ceramic wall, created especially for Zurich’s headquarters. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Does it come with vehicle insurance? Jakarta-based Ichwan Noor’s iconic ‘Beetle Sphere,’ ground floor of the ‘B’ building. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Space for creativity

Stephan Hürlemann’s studio developed the interior design for Quai Zurich Campus.

In 2018, designer and architect Stephan Hürlemann received the Milano Design Award for his installation ‘Giants with Dwarf.’ Photo: Stefan Altenburger

To what extent does furniture influence a space?

Architecture and furnishings influence each other – also in the way their value is perceived. In a museum context, for example, an object appears valuable, but it loses its importance in a chaotic setting. My designs for Quai Zurich Campus had to be of high quality and done in a way that ties together architecture of different periods, while bringing together past and present.

How do furnishings influence performance?

Corporate headquarters increasingly need to encompass a variety of views, while also embodying a company’s values in a tangible way. It‘s about inspiration and identification, and the working environment must reflect and support that. That’s why, among other things, I designed a specific range of furniture for Zurich that celebrates precisely this interaction.

How can you tell whether a space ‘works’?

When it‘s used, and people like to spend time in it. I often design rooms that can be adapted by those using them to meet their specific needs. For Zurich, we also designed individual, dynamic zones with mobile walls and elements. The space will thus adapt to the people in it.

From Telelift to Twitter

Social media is just the latest development in a long evolution of how we communicate at work.

In a single day in 2020 Zurich employees shared 660,000 chat messages and held 12,400 virtual meetings. Traffic on our social media channels topped three million visits. We’ve come a long way from handwritten letters, and the days when typewriters constituted new technology. Only in the 1930s was it possible to make real photo copies with a machine that required a full-time photographer. Up until the late 1950s and early 1960s, computers relied on punch cards until mainframes as big as shipping containers arrived. Of course, digital transformations simply happen, sometimes when we aren’t looking and don’t notice them until they are part of our lives.

Tons of paper moved from office to office

What, for example, happened to the in-house technology in Zurich’s headquarters called the Telelift, a system that transported tons of paper in containers on tracks from office to office? It was phased out after Zurich introduced terminals hooked to a central computer. By 1984, 100 of Zurich’s Swiss offices were connected to the data center on a network. One day without fanfare, the Telelift was quietly dismantled. As desktop computers became common in the 1990s, the internet was at first only available to employees who could demonstrate a business need. Soon, however, without much fuss, everyone was connected online. Social media was also making inroads. Zurich introduced its first Twitter account in 2010. In 2015 it received global praise for a rainbow logo on social media to mark U.S. recognition of same-sex marriage. In 2018, Zurich introduced Workplace by Facebook for employees, while customers also could begin to take advantage of digital convenience, including Zurich’s insurance for small electronic devices, bought and managed online. We are thus protecting the same devices that bring our customers closer to us.

A virtual component to work life

Technology is also making inroads elsewhere. Just ask Zurich’s risk engineers. Zurich’s risk engineering team created the award-winning digital tool Risk Advisor that allows Zurich to do remote risk assessments for customers just about anywhere. One inspection allowed engineers in Mexico City to check a customer’s site in Nicaragua, assisted by our offices in Switzerland and Panama. The digital revolution is turning us into a connected society, free to work, and even sing together from anywhere. That was the case when 50 Zurich employees performed an original Zurich song from wherever they were in 2020. If all that digital harmony gets too much, you can put down your devices. At least, until you are overpowered by the need to check your social media accounts, buy a new insurance policy online, or sing a song with your colleagues.

Sit where you like

Open-plan offices are great – or a nuisance. They drive collaboration and drive us crazy. Quai Zurich Campus defines the best of what a good office can do. It’s up to us to make it work.

Communal, clattering productivity in 1942. Photo: Zurich Archives

Being together in an office means making allowances for everyone’s odd habits. There are some employees who feel nervous sitting in large open spaces without cover at their backs. There are those who cough, hum or whistle, and others who hate noise. There are those who heat up fish pies in the office microwave. Generally, there is one person who walks around the entire floor at any given moment in time, conducting calls on a headset, like a wandering space alien. Some people want to sit close to others, and others stake out the quietest corner. Some people want to – need to – have the same desk every day. There are those who appear in the office off and on, and those who mainly work from home. And, there are Zurich employees who work in remote places around the world, like the one who, depending on the region and day, might be dodging howler monkeys, putting up with giant chameleons, or fighting off malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

Furniture used to reflect hierarchy

For better or worse, bringing staff together into one big office was a practice firmly established by the 1920s. Around that time Zurich introduced an open-plan office in the building that used to house the Vita Life business. Photos from back then show the office with desks arranged in stern rows, each row occupied by well- attired employees taking matters in hand. Putting lots of individuals together doing standardized and repetitive tasks might have once been considered cost-effective. It also allowed lucky managers who had individual offices with carpeted corridors to feel important. The German word ‘Teppichetage,’ a reference to the plush carpeted corridors of yesteryear, still is used today when referring to directors' offices. Furniture, too, used to be contingent upon status. A reconstruction of an imposing former chairman’s desk can be seen in the Quai Zurich Campus heritage center. Approach with caution! As late as the 1990s, if an employee was caught using a chair designated for a manager, the chair would be snatched away. Much has changed in the meantime, however, and the concept of open-plan has given way to agile working. This has become more acceptable as technology improves.

A sofa is no longer just a sofa

Employees at Quai Zurich Campus can sit (or stand or confabulate) wherever is best-suited to the task. They may hold meetings on comfortable furniture in co-working spaces. Here the problem might even be to convince other people you are in fact working, given the extreme comfort of the surroundings. To mitigate such fears, employees might be advised to adopt stressed and harried expressions so as not to look too comfy. Designers like to talk about spatial branding. Hence, at Quai Zurich Campus, a sofa is no longer just a sofa, but rather a high-tech seating platform indicating that work is being done with ports for charging electronic gear. We’re not relaxing, we’re working hard! Zurich’s buildings also stress unity. Legal, finance, risk and HR teams work in neighborhoods. If noise in one’s own hood gets to be too much, employees might escape to quiet rooms. And yet, wherever one chooses to work, and how, collaboration is maintained. Meetings might be real or virtual. Workspaces take into account not only one’s mindset, but also the belief that our workplace is wherever we are. And that’s the way it should be. So, next time you’re having a bad day at work, and the noise is distracting, keep in mind that somewhere a colleague is facing down monkeys and mosquitoes. Suddenly, the person yelling into the headset next to you eating a microwaved mackerel casserole doesn’t seem quite so bad.

Paperless, digital offices are the norm in 2021. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Inner beauty

Buildings are like people: the inner qualities are what matters. While Quai Zurich Campus’ exterior is striking, the interiors are equally awesome.

Mirror table
Designer Stephan Hürlemann reinterpreted the table that still stands, in a new incarnation, in the anteroom to the historic boardroom. He replaced the table’s old leather top with black lacquered glass. The reflecting surface introduces more light and mirrors the carefully recreated silk wallpaper.
Photo: Stephan Birrer

If a building’s façade is its face to the world, its interior is its soul. Interior design and furnishings should inspire employees and captivate guests, while making everyone feel at home. This requires special attention to design, furniture and material. As Danish architect and interior designer Finn Juhl put it: “You can’t create happiness with beautiful objects, but you can destroy quite a lot of happiness with ugly ones.” At Quai Zurich Campus, old meets new, historical pieces interact with modern ones, and over a century of tradition joins modern innovations. It shows how timeless classics can co-exist with new and bold pieces. In the entrance, for example, Gerrit Rietveld’s ‘Utrecht’ armchair from 1935 reposes happily next to Mai-Thu Perret’s contemporary carpet, which Perret made specially for Zurich. In the Innovation Hub, spaces are dynamic, a concept given life by room dividers that move. These ‘dancing walls’ shift to create whatever type of rooms are needed at any given time: spaces that adapt to people’s needs and not the other way around. Mobile walls allow people to rethink the workspace, and possibly the very work they’re doing. A solution that gives heart to soul.

Oak reception desk
Quai Zurich Campus’ main entrance boasts an oak reception desk that stands on three legs. The design, custom built by Stephan Hürlemann, seems to float and aims to bridge the gap between visitors and people behind the counter. Unlike conventional reception areas that create a distance, it thus serves as a place that welcomes encounters.
Photo: Stephan Birrer

Geometric chandeliers
A great number of chandeliers, some circular and many rectangular in shape, cast a magical glow throughout the interiors of Quai Zurich Campus’ buildings. Designed by architect Adolf Krischanitz, the lighting reprises the motif of the prismatic exterior façade but brings it inside on a smaller scale.
Photo: Stephan Birrer

Waiting area
The waiting area on the third floor of historic Building A invites visitors to linger. Design classics such as the Utrecht chair by Gerrit Rietveld from 1935, the side table ‘D.555.1’ by Gio Ponti dated 1954 - 1955, combined with modern avantgarde – like the Bonavita carpet by Suzanne Sharp – allow an interplay of colors and shapes in the historic space.
Photo: Stephan Birrer

String of pearls
The staircases in the older buildings on Quai Zurich Campus, including those in the original and first building on the site, completed in 1900, have been restored to their original beauty. They are now presented, literally, in a new light. Adolf Krischanitz used lights that almost, if a little imagination is used seem to resemble strings of pearls.
Photo: Simon Habegger

Creativity implies responsibility. As we change how we do things, we learn more about our world and ourselves.

Photo: Simon Habegger

Jelena Buha

40 | Global Risk Engineer

Roland Siegwart

62 | ETH Professor and Drone Pioneer

Deepak Subbarao

42 | Digital Transformation Lead

Neta Rozy

28 | CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, PARAMETRIX INSURANCE

Isabelle Rottmann

44 | Health-Tech Founder

Frank M. Rinderknecht

65 | CEO, Rinspeed

Home to a smarter future

Technology develops in ways we don’t expect. Rest assured, Quai Zurich Campus has incorporated future unknowns into its smart building design.

Smart buildings: monitoring functions in real time. Photo: Akenza

In William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, the character Dixie Flatline is immortalized as a kind of artificial intelligence construct. By the story’s end, Dixie begs to be erased. Even in science fiction, it seems, technology has a finite lifespan. In the real world (ask anyone who just bought a new phone) technology changes at a breakneck pace. Recall that at the start of the latest millennium good connectivity meant a modem speed of 56,000 bits per second.

Today, connection speeds have increased by multiples of thousands of times that. If future smart devices link via satellite swarms or are replaced by something we cannot yet imagine, Quai Zurich Campus should still be able to adapt. And flexibility matters. In a world where bathroom scales and salt-shakers, in fact just about any device that can save time, money, and promote health, have become intelligent, the lifecycle of gadgetry is increasingly short. “In technology, the only constant is change. Being adaptable is how we thrive. We can bring the benefits of that to our customers,” according to Ericson Chan, Group Chief Information and Digital Officer at Zurich. His desire to equip Quai Zurich Campus with the latest in digital convenience includes introducing the voluntary biometric technology used in speed gates at the main entrance. It's the first such system installed in any Zurich office worldwide.

Ever hear of digital twins? The technology NASA uses to design spacecraft is also at home in Quai Zurich Campus, where virtual replicas assist in tasks like updating software and booking meeting rooms. On the site, 2,000 sensors monitoring everything from CO2 levels to people flows collect about 750 million data points a year. That should be enough to spot potential for improvements. The data are anonymous. No Big Brother will rat out those too lazy to walk up a flight of stairs, or who hang out by the coffee machine for hours. Smart devices linked to the sensors communicate with a central platform via LoRaWAN; what sounds like a Sci-Fi character is in fact a long-range wireless area network that helps to reduce the power drain from smart devices. To achieve peak building intelligence, Quai Zurich Campus has collaborated with several young innovative technology companies, including the Swiss startup called Akenza, which provided Quai Zurich Campus’s central connectivity management system – its brain. This runs on a unified Internet of Things (IoT) platform. Another young company, Spica Technologies, worked with Zurich to develop an app which has been christened ‘One Zurich.’ It offers employees ways to book things they need (rooms, food, building access), might want (an empty room to enjoy a quiet moment of respite) or use frequently (information about scheduled events, train schedules).

Our table will serve you now
Waiting on tables? At Quai Zurich Campus, there are also a couple of tables that wait on you. Our interactive tablet-style tables, including one in the foyer, use the same technology found in smart devices. They’re just much bigger. Swipe a finger to explore different aspects of Zurich: take a 360-degree tour of our headquarters, learn more about Zurich’s support for charitable organizations (for fun, try out the Wheel of Fortune app, which awards donations to charities Zurich supports), and learn about Zurich’s products and services. Or choose the app that will introduce you to Zurich’s history. Once you feel ready, you’ll be equipped to explore on your own. Now that’s table service!
Photo: Stephan Birrer

Sensors to keep you awake

The foot soldiers in the tech revolution are as likely to be digital as human. The cleaning crew at Quai Zurich Campus comprises not only highly-trained humans, but also a knee-high cyborg-ish cobot, which unlike a robot, doesn’t replace people, just works with them. The cobot does boring things like repetitive vacuuming. The human cleaners – including up to 10 regular daytime staff – carry not just the usual cleaning paraphernalia, but also digital tablets. Staff provided by ISS Facility Services AG also include about 20 in the evenings doing noisier maintenance jobs. The cleaners carry tablets that provide information supplied by IoT sensors and algorithms engineered by the Swiss company Soobr (the name is Swiss-German for ‘clean’). Sensors include those that measure how often a restroom door has been opened, or which desks have been used. Consulting their tablets, cleaners focus on spaces that need attention.

If people are breathing or moving around inside Quai Zurich, smart technology knows they are there. The Swedish company Elsys, set up as a spinoff from Umeå University, provided the sensors that measure CO2 in Quai Zurich Campus’s facilities. If sensors notice higher CO2 concentrations, ventilation systems are adjusted accordingly even before anyone starts to yawn. Sensors monitoring people flows at Quai Zurich Campus are supplied by Xovis, whose systems are also used in airports, for example, to regulate escalator speed to control queues, or tell travelers how long they have to wait in line at security check-in. Installed at Quai Zurich Campus, its sensors see in 3D, like a human eye, measuring anonymous traffic, which can tip off cleaners and tell employees which seats are free. Who knows what new gadgetry we will rely on in a year, or two, or five? At least at Quai Zurich Campus, technology will have the capability to segue from today’s big thing to tomorrow’s. The future is hard to predict. What we understand as technology may change. But whatever is installed at Quai Zurich Campus, it should help us to remain a step ahead.

Tablets show cleaners which areas need service. Photo: Soobr

Photo: Eyefactive

Feeling good

Quai Zurich Campus is the first property in Europe and only the third worldwide to achieve the highest platinum level certification for both sustainability and for wellness.

Resident anti-stress team in action. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Most people don’t notice, at least, at first, how their workspace affects their health. Yet, even on a subliminal level, where we work can make a major difference to how we feel and our productivity. Healthy offices promote physical and mental well-being. That should be the case for the Quai Zurich Campus where buildings meet the highest level platinum certification of the widely respected international Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building standard. They also are designed to get a platinum certification for WELL, a rating system that measures and monitors how buildings affect human health. And, the buildings satisfy stringent Swiss Minergie standards. How hard was it to meet all the requirements?

Shellac as a challenge

In the case of the Quai Zurich Campus consider just one word. Shellac. According to Swiss Minergie-ECO standards, paints and coatings may contain only up to one percent ethanol. But to achieve historical accuracy, the renovation of our oldest building, constructed in 1900, required authentic shellac with higher concentration of ethanol than is now permitted. Lots of ventilation prior to moving in allowed Zurich to maintain historical preservation guidelines and still ensure an interior environment safe for humans. Shellac used in the historic spaces wasn’t the only challenge. Historical accuracy also called for a dark slate roof on the oldest building. But dark slate would have absorbed too much heat, contributing to heat islands which may increase global warming and contravene LEED guidelines.

A beautiful but toxic green

The rooftop solution? Using an artificial tile slightly lighter in color that appears nearly identical to natural slate. Another issue was the patina on the copper figures on the roof; the copper has weathered to a beautiful green. The green is copper nitrate, which is toxic. Not something you want in the environment. To prevent copper nitrate from flowing into groundwater, a heavy-metal filter was installed, according to Georg Schulte, head of sustainable building at CSD Engineers, which supported Zurich in applying for the LEED and Minergie-ECO certification. But sustainability is not just about simply measuring things. It includes how people work, and feel. “People’s behavior is directly influenced by both physical and intangible building elements,” according to Marta Bouchard, a consultant at Intep, the company that helped Quai Zurich Campus work for its WELL certification.

Rooms with a view

Health and wellness considerations include encouraging people with digital signage, if possible, for example, prompting them to take the stairs more often. Healthy food choices in dining areas are given prominence. To make sure everyone feels comfortable using restrooms, Quai Zurich Campus will include single-user bathrooms denoted by gender-neutral signs.

Proximity to nature helps: “just like taking a walk in the forest, people feel much calmer when they experience a connection with the natural world,” says Intep’s Marta Bouchard. As an example, all workstations at Quai Zurich Campus are placed near windows with a view to the outdoors, trees or lake. Window planters with living green plants further enhance the feeling of being close to nature. Exposure to daylight throughout the building should help reduce tiredness and offset the winter blues. Windows open to admit fresh air. Non-toxic cleaning products are used.

Blankets and a flexible dress code

At the end of the day, how we feel is highly individual. Ask anyone who has ever worked in an office: half of one’s co-workers are too cold, and half are too hot. Never fear. Besides a flexible dress code and operable windows, blankets are available, washed weekly.

Plants can be soothing and energizing. Photo: Simon Habegger

What do machines learn?

Facial recognition technology can help to keep buildings secure. But when it comes to learning there are things machines can do, and things they can’t.

Hello! Welcome to my world. Photo: Stephan Birrer

English mathematician Augusta Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace, believed machines only did what humans told them. Based on her ideas formulated on a proto computer designed by Charles Babbage in the 1820s, it took 200 years to teach machines to recognize us and let us into buildings. With the technology available, however, the operation requires only a fraction of a second; a simple solution making keys, badges and fumbling for lost IDs obsolete. That seems pretty smart. Of course, you don’t have to agree to use it. At Quai Zurich Campus, biometric technology is completely voluntary. Employees may also enter using an app on their phone, which gives them info about available seating, for example, and works like a mini GPS. Or they may still opt for plastic badges. But unlike our physical characteristics, badges can get left somewhere. In the old days, when employees used only badges, there were even incidents of people getting trapped inside high-security gates. Sometimes they called colleagues to rescue them. Or, as one luckless employee stuck trying to exit late one night from an Alfred Escher Street property did, they called the fire department. But, back to our intelligent machine.

One of those people it has learned to recognize passing through Quai Zurich Campus' speed gates is Vincenzo Salipante. His job title at Zurich is Automation Program Lead. What he actually does, is think of ways to make other people’s lives easier. What he really loves to do is learn and pass along what he knows. His team has provided a centralized way to share and re-use knowledge related to data, and he’s developed online training courses for colleagues such as one entitled ‘Managing by Numbers.’ In such ways he can share his passion for knowledge and learning. After he obtained his first degree, a Master’s in Philosophy (specialization in Mathematical Logic, summa cum laude) from the University of Rome in 1999, he received a fellowship to study at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. From there, still desiring knowledge, he pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Bern’s Institute of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, which he received in 2005. In 2006, he joined Zurich as a trainee, and continued to learn. With Zurich’s full encouragement he received an executive MBA at the Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne in 2014. In 2020, still learning while working at Zurich, he completed a yearlong course of studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) to receive a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Data Science.

Based on information, machines can learn to recognize us. But artificial intelligence doesn't involve emotions. An AI isn't happy to see Vincenzo Salipante. It’s not curious, it is just a universal approximator. The AI doesn’t seem to aspire to learn new things, or change jobs. Perhaps the question shouldn’t be if computers can learn, but why more people don’t learn more? Unlike computers, we are still free to follow our passions to find out new things.

The best brains

The humble algorithm seems to understand us. But how well do we understand it?

People who spend a lot of time analyzing the benefits of artificial intelligence, or ‘AI,’ like to say that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem will look like a nail. Since its very beginnings, insurance has used data to assess and price risks. Major changes are afoot in how insurers use sophisticated technology to better understand risks and protect their customers. Based on the hammer analogy, those familiar with AI might be tempted to think all problems can be solved with the right algorithm. But a human brain can perform an estimated 200 trillion operations per second and has an ethical component to its thinking that machine intelligence still lacks.

Keeping humans in the equation

AI algorithms are sometimes considered ‘statistics on steroids.’ Where there is data, there is often bias, a fact that must be taken into account when training AIs. “Zurich is devoting a lot of time to selecting, vetting and connecting the data we use to calibrate our AI algorithms,” says Gero Gunkel, Chief Operating Officer at Zurich Customer Active Management (ZCAM). That includes stress-testing the models to avoid bias and distorted decision-making. Data are highly sensitive assets. While cooperating with authorities to uphold privacy and data protection, Zurich, through its Group-wide data commitment, also goes beyond legal requirements, promising never to sell customers’ personal data nor to share personal data without being fully transparent. While Zurich uses AI in many applications, it is careful to do so with the proper safeguards in place. Once these issues and concerns are addressed, AI can offer interesting perspectives, for example, recommending insurance and other products or services in the same way well-known online consumer platforms might.

AI applications that may save human lives

For commercial customers, AIs allow Zurich to respond to routine queries, freeing up time for more human personalization and interaction where needed. But this is likely to be only the beginning. An AI can review data much faster, and usually more accurately than humans. It is increasingly being used to spot insurance fraud by flagging anomalies. Using a more nuanced, contextual approach, an AI can be trained to analyze so-called unstructured data and draw inferences, making it less likely to flag something that might be unusual but is not fraud. AIs might also, in future, be widely used to analyze risks: seismic data, perhaps, allowing more accurate prediction of earthquakes, or tsunamis, or even volcanic eruptions. They may take risk-spotting to the next level and could be used to see risks well before danger arises. Together, AI and humans can achieve a lot.

Life hacks

Expect the unexpected. That might be the appropriate motto for hackathons.

Fast-paced and collaborative: HackZurich has grown into a global event. Photo: HackZurich

At Quai Zurich Campus, Zurich seeks to emulate the innovative spirit of collaborative, fast-paced gatherings called hackathons. ‘Hack’ in this case means a way to do things better – as in, ‘life hacks.’ “An unforgettable adventure” is how its organizers describe a hackathon held annually in the city of Zurich that is sponsored by a variety of companies and organizations, including Zurich. From its inception in 2014, the annual Hack Zurich has grown to be a premier, global event attracting contestants from all over the world. The same innovative spirit that powers participants in these gatherings is what we strive for every day at Quai Zurich Campus. Companies like Zurich take part in HackZurich because it opens a window on new and different ways to develop solutions for customers, and the type of thinking that goes on there is something it wants to emulate in-house, too. “I’m always impressed by a solution I didn’t expect,” says Joel Agard, who leads Zurich in exploring ways to be more innovative, and is also an advisor at HackZurich. Sandra Hauser, Head of Transformation and Technology in Zurich Switzerland, calls HackZurich “an opportunity to set up challenges aligned with our purpose, that can inspire our own tech teams.”

While HackZurich runs for just a weekend, from before midnight on a Friday to a Sunday evening when prizes are handed out, those intrepid employees at Zurich want to capture that spirit every day. In the ‘innovation hub,’ basically an engine room powering the thinking that goes on to revolutionize the business, someone is even right now no doubt working on great ideas that – just maybe – will also revolutionize your life.

Taking the pulse of health

We like to think about health and talk about it, but taking steps actually to be and stay healthy and motivated is a challenge. Can an insurer like Zurich help?

Meet Vita: the people’s Parcours. Photo: Zurich Archives

Don’t sweat! For anyone who has ever suffered through a passionate discussion about diets and exercise as people puffed on cigarettes, it’s obvious we humans are conflicted about what constitutes good health. We know that exercising and eating the right food, walking on occasion and getting enough sleep, is good for us. And we love fitness gadgets and apps. Yet sometimes it’s hard to get and stay motivated. Zurich has long sought to educate people about, and promote health. In 2020 it launched its global LiveWell business. As one of many innovations Zurich has introduced over the years to help people to lead better, healthier lives, LiveWell stands out due to its sophisticated technology and personalized approach. “Our goal is to give customers options on ways to improve their health and wellbeing throughout their whole lives,” according to Helene Westerlind, Chief Executive Officer of LiveWell.

‘The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off’ is a real newspaper headline about a man who died in 1932 after regularly drinking a commercial radium-isotope-laced health tonic. Fads come and go, of course. But Zurich’s customers have traditionally relied on its sound advice and practical approach, eschewing quack cures. Zurich set up its life insurance company, Vita, in 1922, and became the first European life insurer on the continent to offer free medical check-ups to policyholders. Vita’s popular Adviser brochure series gave tips on staying mentally and physically healthy (get enough sleep, control your temper) and promoted life’s simple pleasures, like walking barefoot. Zurich’s grounded, common-sense ideas included a new way to stay fit: blazing a health trail – literally – as an innovator, introducing the Vita Parcours in the late 1960s and 1970s. These outdoor fitness circuits encouraged everyone to go outside and get moving.

Combining a running track with 15 to 20 stations for strength training and agility, the trails provided fitness for everyone at no cost – a true innovation! The Vita Parcours, open 24 hours a day, year-round, also introduced Swiss to what was then a strange new sport – jogging. When Vita was rebranded in the 1990s, the Vita name was kept for the fitness paths. Today there are about 500 of the courses in Switzerland, and at last count, over 40 abroad. Every generation seems to discover them anew. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced gyms and sports halls to close, the trails saw a surge in popularity. The New York Times noted in an article in May 2020 that the outdoor circuits “credited with bringing exercise to millions of Europeans in the 1970s … are busier than they have been in years.” Zurich remains a trailblazer in the interests of health. But, no matter how sophisticated the approach might be, in the end, people will still need to get out there and work to stay healthy. Okay, maybe sweat a little.

Nature is really the best coach. Staying fit, late 1960s. Photo: ETH-Bibliothek / Comet Photo AG

Bringing exercise to millions of people: Vita Parcours. Photo: Zurich Archives

We are partly of the future, and partly of the past. Every day we become those whom others will remember.

Photo: Simon Habegger

Antonio Pungitore

64 | Master Plasterer

Anna Schindler

53 | Director of Urban Development, City Of Zurich

Christian Harb

54 | Archaeologist

Thomas Inglin

57 | Historian and Archivist

Christine Barz

38 | Curator of Monuments, Canton of Zurich

Lukas Rühl

38 | Restoration Specialist and Cabinetmaker

The Lion King

If natural selection alone chose sculptors, with his massive build and force of personality, Urs Eggenschwyler would have been one of the most successful examples of his species.

Sculptor Urs Eggenschwyler shown with his favorite subject. Photo: Stadtarchiv Stadt Zürich

Perhaps certain sculptors also adopt the tone and demeanor of their subjects. Urs Eggenschwyler, not only in his work but also in his private life lived, breathed and cohabited with his favorite subject: the lion. On occasion it is said he attempted to dine like these feline predators. Zurich city’s heraldic lions are not constrained to archetypes. The city’s noble symbol might be portrayed as a lion rampant, or a lion resting.

Eggenschwyler’s lions, by virtue of his close association, were always true to life. Along with other lions, for example, one guarding the harbor of Enge, and four lions on Stauffacher Bridge, he created the lions on the Breitinger Street side of the oldest Quai Zurich Campus building, and may also have contributed others.

He was born in 1849 in Subingen in the Swiss canton of Solothurn, when the world was re-assessing nature. Darwin was postulating theories of evolution in ‘On the Origin of Species’ and in art, too, the world was turning from idealized and stylized depictions toward more naturalist renderings.

After attempting to study sculpture in Munich, which proved difficult due to his growing deafness, Eggenschwyler began studying animals in real life: in zoos, and through dissections. His sketch books show his interests extended to giraffes and elephants, and in Berne, Egg enschwyler provided two bronze bears for the Swiss Federal Parliament building. But his sculptures, sketches and paintings always returned to his true love, the lion.

Two of Eggenschwyler’s four lion temperaments on Quai Zurich Campus. Photo: Zurich Archives

Out for a stroll with his favorite feline

And, eventually, as to be expected for someone who didn’t do things halfway, Eggenschwyler got hold of the real thing. He set up a menagerie in the Zurich Milchbuck neighborhood. Live lions proved to be a hit. A photo from the time shows men, all looking as serious as it is possible to look, as they view one of Eggenschwyler’s lions. The great cat is lounging on a bench, one paw dangling. It might even be yawning. Lions are exciting to humans, but to lions, we are probably rather boring creatures. It is said that some pet owners even had no qualms about giving up their own housecats to feed his lions. Eggenschwyler re fused. Instead he kept the cats, adopting them as part of his menagerie. Lions in mini-format.

Some stories about legends are apocryphal. But there are quite reliable accounts that Eggenschwyler took his favorite lion on strolls through Zurich. After some of the more timid populace became concerned about the safety of such practices, he started walking his lions on a chain, and only after dark when, presumably, after a few beers those who saw him might have thought they were seeing an unusually large dog.

If true power resides in magnanimity, true kingliness expresses itself in restraint and intelligence. Eggenschwyler’s lions have nobility and character. Eggenschwyler’s four lions on the oldest Quai Zurich Campus building express the four temperaments: sanguine, melancholic, phlegmatic and choleric.

Perhaps all of us should consider ourselves more often as specimens for closer study. Taking in Zurich’s lions, ask yourself which one you most closely resemble. Are you cheerful, sad, calm, or angry? Are you feeling caged? Are you roaming free? What sort of lion are you?

One of the Eggenschwyler lions watching over Stauffacher Bridge in Zurich. Photo: Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich

Eggenschwyler’s cast stone lion still guards a harbor near Quai Zurich Campus. Photo: Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich

The future of history

Everything humans create, record, write or leave behind is a potential source for historians. Everything that is destroyed leaves a gap in our understanding of the past.

Fit for the future: digital research space. Photo: Markus Loke

One does not need to go as far as the famous maxim of Roman law: quod non est in actis, non est in mundo (what isn’t in records doesn’t exist), to grasp the fact that something which leaves no trace or whose traces are willfully erased will be forgotten. Artefacts and records must be archived to remain useful. If not, they inevitably vanish over time. The work of archiving is not done by humans alone. The remains of the lake dwellers preserved in the sediments of Lake Zurich beneath Quai Zurich Campus demonstrate that. People or natural forces can preserve what will ultimately shape what we remember, and how.

Today most documents and records in Zurich’s Corporate Archives are in digital format, and this poses new technical challenges, including making sure there is the right electronic storage on hand. But someone still needs to decide what to keep. Since it was established as an organizational institution, Corporate Archives has been in charge of deciding what to retain. It tries to document the decision-making processes within the company, as well as who made the decisions, the things that guided and influenced them and how Zurich interacts with its various stakeholders.

Corporate Archives houses a broad collection of records, documents (including advertising posters), recordings of all types (photographs, audiotapes, films) and objects (promotional items, business machines, even neckties). But Corporate Archives was only established in 1995. Sometimes we don’t know why certain items were kept. Before Corporate Archives was set up as a formal unit, some records were probably retained for obvious reasons, while others seem to have maintained by chance. Documents with legal relevance are kept in most corporate archives, including minutes of board meetings and annual general meetings, annual reports, and the articles of incorporation, as well as business licenses. In Zurich’s archives, there is also a complete series of premiums, claims, and expenses from the 1880s to the 1980s. Such statistics form the scientific core of the insurance business.

Sometimes, the longer that documents are kept, the less willing people are to throw them out. When they are rediscovered, they inspire awe.

But why keep voluminous books of letters sent between Zurich’s home office and its general agents in Switzerland and branch offices across Europe from the 1880s and 1890s? Sometimes, the longer that documents are kept, the less willing people are to throw them out. When they are rediscovered, they inspire awe. This may have been the case with the old correspondence, which today provides invaluable glimpses of how Zurich conducted its business in the late nineteenth century – from underwriting decisions and risk selection to settling claims. The archives also house nearly complete accounting books from the start of the business in 1873 to 1930 when accounting was converted to punch card machines. There are also hundreds of journals, ledgers and so called brouillons, in which every transaction (payments and receipts) was initially recorded. Some of these volumes are very large. The ledgers measure about 70 by 40 centimeters. And they are heavy.

All together, they weigh tons. Considerable effort was needed to retain these. These heavy tomes appear to have been moved several times, even transported between buildings. Zurich aspires to be one of the most responsible businesses in the world. Corporate Archives is a witness to how we behave as a company, demonstrating that the form of governance of a public limited company has remained surprisingly resilient and constant over the years, despite changes going on all around.

As if to support Tomasi di Lampedusa’s axiom: Deve cambiare tutto perché niente cambi (everything must change so that nothing changes).

Water under the bridge

The lake views from Zurich’s headquarters might have been very, very different!

Zurich transformed: Quai Bridge pilings, 1883. Photo: Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich / Dominik Lenz

Standing on Zurich City’s Quaibrücke spanning the Limmat, passersby can admire the peaks off in the distance – is that Twäriberg, Sandgipfel, or Bös Fulen? And they can thank Arnold Bürkli, Zurich’s former city engineer, for the view. If not for him, perhaps Zurich, the company, would have had its headquarters by a river, or next to a rail line.

The future of Zurich’s lakefront was up in the air in 1873 when an ambitious engineer, Kaspar Wetli, presented a plan to build an ‛iron ring’ of rail lines around Zurich’s lake basin. Trains would have dominated the beauty spots where today tourists snap pictures for social media, and Zurich, the company, might have later chosen another part of town for its headquarters or had to live with freight trains rumbling next to its property.

Mud, hard work and patience

Thankfully, Wetli’s proposal was rejected by Zurich’s citizens, who instead decided to turn the lake shore into a prestigious showcase. They held contests, and by 1881 Bürkli’s proposal to develop the shoreline got underway. According to local historian Roman G. Schönauer, the end result was to turn Zurich from a rather insular river town into the open city looking outward – the city by the lake.

But it’s not easy building up a lakeshore. Bürkli’s plans required hard work and patience. At one point an entire pier for the new bridge connecting Bellevue and Enge sank without a trace. As the shoreline was filled in, a few intrepid citizens also nearly disappeared as well after stepping into deep mud used to extend the shoreline by almost 220,000 square meters (53 acres).

In August 1883, the new Quai bridge, 121 meters (397 feet) long, was opened to pedestrians. By December 1884 it was ready for carriages. By July 1887, the promenades along the lake had been planted with fully grown trees arranged in a naturalistic English style. Two gigantic plaster lions by sculptor Urs Eggenschwyler (the Lion King) made a brief appearance on what became Bürkliplatz. But their imposing size left Zurich looking small by comparison. They were removed.

Elegance - and insurance

The new lakefront also attracted the attention of growing companies. In 1898, when Zurich’s board was looking for a permanent place to establish its corporate headquarters, it bought the site where Quai Zurich Campus stands today. It was in good company, with elegant apartments – the Red Palace and the White Palace – nearby. Zurich’s own palace was flanked to the north by Swiss Life insurance company, and a few years after its building was completed, to the south by Swiss Reinsurance.

Of course, people being what they are, every so often, someone comes along with a new plan for the lakefront, such as the City in the Lake that would have filled in Zurich’s basin and put up skyscrapers. That plan was never realized. Even more bizarre, another proposal called for building a gigantic bridge dubbed the beaver dam between Tiefenbrunnen and Wollishofen, which also, thankfully, never materialized.

A word of advice for anyone planning to improve Zurich’s lakefront. Before proceeding, take a moment to stand on the Quai bridge. Gaze at the view. Ask yourself in all honesty: could anyone really improve on Bürkli’s masterpiece?

As city engineer, Arnold Bürkli (1833–1894) re-shaped Zurich City to people’s benefit. His achievements include the imposing Quai Bridge connecting Bellevue and Enge, and the park bordering Lake Zurich that today still offers a welcome respite from hectic urban life.Photo: ETH-Bibliothek Zürich

Occupational hazards

The three figures atop Quai Zurich Campus’s oldest building were meant as a beacon of hope.

A goddess representing the protective powers of insurance. Photo: Stephan Birrer

Contemporaries described the oldest building on Quai Zurich Campus completed in 1900 as an ‘insurance palace.’ But private insurance also represented a beacon of hope to ordinary workers, and very likely the sculptor, Gustav Siber, had this in mind when he created the monumental composition that crowns Zurich’s headquarters by Lake Zurich. It’s an allegory of the blessings bestowed by workers’ compensation. The gigantic group is dominated by a goddess wearing a Greek helmet, representing the protective powers of insurance. Such allegorical figures were a fairly common advertising motif around the turn of the last century.

If you can get a good view, you will see that Siber’s insurance goddess holds one arm aloft, perhaps summoning help, while at her feet lies an injured worker. Kneeling at her side, simply dressed, is the wife or daughter of the injured man, who raises her arms in supplication. She is not to be disappointed. For the goddess holds a horn of plenty, indicating wealth to be bestowed, or at least a livable survivor’s annuity. The composition sends a strong message that would have resonated at a time when industrialization had exposed workers to new risks. Debates were raging about how best to protect individuals, and stabilize society, when loss of the main wage earner put entire families at risk.

A life’s work vanishes in Lake Zurich

In 1871, Germany introduced a law that encouraged employers to carry workers’ compensation insurance, and, in 1886, it nationalized this cover. Already by 1881, Switzerland required employers to compensate injured workers. France followed suit in 1898. In both countries employers bought cover from private insurers like Zurich.

In fact, French workers’ compensation comprised the largest single portion of Zurich’s premium income in 1900, the year Siber completed his monumental work. Yet there were discussions at home of adopting a public scheme like Germany’s. In 1900, the Swiss held a referendum on introducing state accident insurance for industrial workers. It failed. But the idea didn’t go away. Zurich entered the political arena, championing a referendum to keep workers’ compensation insurance private. Voters decided otherwise.

In 1912, Switzerland approved a National Accident Insurance Fund (Suva). Meanwhile, the sculptor Gustav Siber faced a personal crisis. By 1913, as a widower supporting three children, demand for his style of emotional realism had dropped off. According to an account by his granddaughter Elizabeth Siber, one day he sank all statues and models he possessed in Lake Zurich. Was it disappointment or a psychological moment that drove him to despair? Artists, too, it seems, can suffer from the occupational hazards of their work.

What lies beneath

Under Quai Zurich Campus, archeologists found tantalizing evidence of an ancient culture, one that can only be imagined. But were those people really so different from us?

Digging up the past: excavation site along Zurich’s lakeshore. Photo: ETH-Bibliothek Zürich

Walking around Quai Zurich Campus today you might see people dressed in leather, with tattoos, chewing gum. Imagine standing in the same spot almost 5,000 years ago. What might you have seen? Possibly also tattooed people dressed in leather, or at least animal hides, walking around, chewing gum. In some ways, the lake dwellers of Switzerland might have been a lot like us. A piece of prehistoric chewing gum very likely made from birch tree pitch, with human teeth imprints still visible, was just one of many well-preserved artifacts found during the Quai Zurich Campus site excavations.

The gum could have been used as a form of dental hygiene, or as an adhesive. Based on what was uncovered in the damp sediments under the site, we may almost feel like we know these people. Excavations indicate that, just like us today, food was an extremely important part of their lives. It was possible to reconstruct their diet in part from traces left on the remnants of cooking pots.

Some had copper for decoration or tools

Skeletal evidence at some other sites showed typical wear from grinding grain in mortars using heavy pestles, a task that women performed. The lake dwellers kept domestic animals including dogs that might have watched over property, and sometimes wound up in the stewpot. When cereal crops were poor, the clans likely hunted more meat.

They were also skilled artisans. Some people had copper for decoration or tools. The lake dwellers knew how to weave linen, based on looms found in excavations.

Then, as now, humans must have handed down skills from one generation to the next. The greatest number of artifacts dated from 4,700 years ago – left by the so-called Corded Ware people.

Mythenquai met Opera parking garage

Although there has long been an ongoing debate about exactly what their homes looked like, archeologists including Christian Harb from the Archaeology Department of Canton Zurich, who led the excavation at Zurich’s site, are confident that many did live in dwellings on top of pilings, or docks over water, perhaps as a kind of insurance against floods and attack. About 200 people could have lived in a settlement of dwellings, each perhaps 30 by 60 meters, topped by shingled roofs. The Mythenquai dwellers were very likely in contact with others including those living in a settlement across the lake, where the Zurich Opera parking garage is located today.

What more might we learn about these people and their lives? Where did they go? Or perhaps they still live among us. Their ancestors could be standing before you now, dressed in leather, chewing gum and admiring each other’s tattoos.

Prehistoric chewing gum unearthed from the Quai Zurich Campus dig. Photo: Kantonsarchäologie Zürich / Martin Bachmann

Bronze-age commune? Reimagining the lives of lake dwellers. Photo: Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich

Photo: Florian Kalotay

Afterword

A building not only defines space. A building also defines its surroundings, with which it maintains a constant dialog. Quai Zurich Campus is closely tied to the city and its people: it is part of the fabric of Zurich. It is also part of the environment in which we live, with all its risks and opportunities. Standing on the shores of Lake Zurich, the Campus is at the junction between people and nature. That’s exactly where insurance finds its key role – protecting people every day from risk. Reading the stories in this book, you can gain insights into the broad spectrum of people and ideas that have made our Zurich Insurance Group what it is today – a symbol of hope and progress in our global industry. We have always sought to understand the fears and concerns people have, and to develop solutions to many of life’s external challenges. As citizens of the city – and of the world – we are proud to be moving toward an exciting future for both Zurich the city, and Zurich the company. Thank you for remaining loyal to us, and thank you for joining us.

Publisher

Zurich Insurance Group
Alessio Vinci, Group Chief Communications Officer
Anja Heinsdorf, Project Lead

Concept and execution

Panda & Pinguin GmbH
Andrea Bleicher
Ruth Brüderlin
Sabina Sturzenegger

Design and art direction

Studio Sturzenegger GmbH
Jürg Sturzenegger

Texts

Alice Ratcliffe

Project management

Tatjana Buser

Consulting

Bernhard Weissberg

We are immensely grateful to the following for their constructive support

Web

toweb GmbH

Print

ERNi Druck und Media AG
Printed CO2-neutrally.

Bookbinding

Bubu AG

Photo: Simon Habegger

Contact

group.communications@zurich.com
Zurich Insurance Group
Group Communications
Mythenquai 2
8002 Zurich, Switzerland

Anja Heinsdorf, Alice Ratcliffe, Tatjana Buser

Disclaimer

This publication has been produced by Zurich Insurance Group Ltd solely for informational purposes. All information contained in this publication have been compiled and obtained from sources believed to be reliable and credible but no representation or warranty, express or implied, is made by Zurich Insurance Group Ltd or any of its subsidiaries as to their accuracy or completeness. No reliance should be placed on any statements contained in this publication. Neither Zurich Insurance Group Ltd nor any of its subsidiaries accept liability for any loss arising from the use or distribution of or reliance upon this publication.

This publication may not be distributed or reproduced either in whole, or in part, without prior written permission of Zurich Insurance Group Ltd, Mythenquai 2, 8002 Zurich, Switzerland.

Quai Zurich Campus

In good company

Welcome to Quai Zurich Campus

Content

For good

Together

Journey

At work

Next

Generations

Florentina Gojani

Florentina Gojani

Alexander Zehnder

Alexander Zehnder

Danielle Brassel

Danielle Brassel

Antonio Atorino

Antonio Atorino

Lukas Böni

Lukas Böni

Judith Haeberli

Judith Haeberli

Go with the flow

Neither fish nor swimmers are at threat

HFO-1234ze is under pressure

Delivering hope

Insurers focus on risk. How does the Z Zurich Foundation approach risk?

What’s been achieved so far?

What does the Foundation do to improve people’s everyday lives?

How do Zurich’s employees get involved?

With so much already achieved, what’s next?

What’s your favorite aspect of the ZZF?

What challenges do you see for ZZF’s next 50 years?

Recycle, re-use, repurpose

Deals on meals

Mooove!

Anti-bin brigade

Water everywhere

Powerful savings

Just chill

Where’s the parking?

More climate friendly

Encouraging good habits

Dodging bicycles

All in the family

Corine Mauch

Corine Mauch

Niklaus Riegg

Niklaus Riegg

François Rapeaud

François Rapeaud

Elisabeth Schlumpf

Elisabeth Schlumpf

Aleksandra Gnach

Aleksandra Gnach

Suba Umathevan

Suba Umathevan

A rock, a fountain or a table?

Stones excite emotions and even fly

Water lettuce creates a cool micro-climate

Infinity underfoot

The color of Zurich

Damage done through restoration

A worldly village

We do it better, we did it first!

A matter of life and death

Tatjana Buser

Tatjana Buser

Günther Vogt

Günther Vogt

Vreni Spoerry

Vreni Spoerry

Mario Greco and Kip

Mario Greco and Kip

Patrick Hess

Patrick Hess

Zerom Kiflay

Zerom Kiflay

Do we need an office?

A comfortable chair and a place to think in peace