Alpine transit visitors centre, Gotthard. The Gotthard base tunnel is a place of marked contrasts - the steadfastness of mountains and the ever more rapid trains; the passangers in their seats and the landscape shooting by; a quick glimpse of the visitors centre followed by 57 km devoid of space and time between north and south. The specific demands set by the visitors centre ATG involve a crossover. The architecture must create a distinctive image for the new Gotthard axis and act as a communicator for a construction which, although not visible, possesses gigantic dimensions. In principle the aesthetic of the construction site is taken as a theme and intensified. An approximation was sought to a pragmatic architecture commited mainly to functionality. The buildings formally resemble ordinary construction containers, i.e. they are formed in cubes stacked on each other. Nevertheless, the contours of the individual modular volumes disappear and they merge into a specific design form. The modular architecture is so conceived that the construction constitutes a total design after each building phase and is in priciple extendable. The graphic silhouettes of the visitor centres have a sphinxlike quality which remains etched in the visitor's mind and yet which represent this construction-of-the-century in a modern way. They are two modern guards to the tunnel portal that do justice to the longest tunnel in the world. The two "physiognomies" in Erstfeld and Pollegio are related, and in principle consist of the same elements. Both display a differentiated vertical volumetry. Both have a head raised to such a height that they are visible from afar and facilitate the desired view over the tunnel portal and the construction site.

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