Salewa Headquarters

The Salewa Headquarters is an iconic architecture of the area bordering the city of Bolzano, the major transport routes and the surrounding natural landscape. Its volumes interact with the nearby mountains, its façades play with the landscape, assimilating it or mirroring its light. A totally sustainable zero-emission building and an independent energy producer. Salewa is one of the most important European companies in the production of clothing and accessories for mountaineering, and its headquarters in Bolzano is a point of reference for the community of mountain enthusiasts who gather here to train on its climbing wall. The complex consists of a series of multifaceted slabs and towers, including a 50 metre-high structure, one of the tallest in the city. The project combines an electro-coloured micro-perforated aluminium skin protecting the most exposed parts of the building with a large vertical glass covering. On one side the envelope design determines a projection of the internal view towards north over the mountains and the city, on the other, it allows to protect the internal environmental comfort from the summer solar radiation, providing shading and ventilantion for a maximum natural control. On the east side of the complex opens the impressive climbing wall’s proscenium, with 200 climbing routes. The wall overlooks the public green area and the bistrot and represents the most convivial part of the complex. The building aims to provide a space of interaction and communication between the company and its network of suppliers, partners and clients. The complex houses also the firm’s showroom, the auditorium, the fitness center for the employees and the nursery. These caracteristics brought the agency “ClimaHouse” to award the project with the “Work&Life” certification, an achievement which acknowledges not only energy related aspects but also the social inclusion in the territory and the quality of life within the working environment.