The task was relatively banal: the construction of a departure hall for touring coaches. The Twerenbold firm is one of the biggest coach companies in Switzerland. Its specialty is European tours lasting several days. The existing 1980s terminal needed to be redesigned and expanded. A symmetrical three-storey building with a tall facade now stands in front of the 75-metre-long old hall, like a locomotive in front of a train. The design by architects Kaschka Knapkiewicz and Axel Fickert extends the hall at its far end, literally and figuratively unfolding the terminal out of the existing fabric and raising it. The new roof creates a fresh new emphasis. The direction of the train is reversed and the old locomotive turned into an unobtrusive tender.

The experience of travellers with tour reservations begins with the typically early-morning departure: the tourists drive their cars into the two parking levels underneath the terminal, take the stairway or lift up to the 320 m≤ waiting area and gaze into the impressive space of the new terminal and the old hall beyond while sipping a cup of coffee. The terminal, which is trapezoid in plan and around 33 to 56 metres along the sides, has space for two coaches one behind the other and six side by side. A folded roof spans both coach and passenger areas. Its irregularly shaped, steel-ribbed underside is clad with green PVC sheeting printed with a map of Europe. On the outside the roof is clad with green-and-yellow striped corrugated plastic. The shape of the semi-transparent folded section conforms to the conditions of the space under it: the angular ground plan allows the coaches to pull into the station without manoeuvring as they swing out of their old hall into the new and from there back out into the street. The roof elevates this procedure into a gesture: the highest point of the entry side is diagonally opposite that of the exit side.

The details reveal the architectsí pleasure in disrupting clarity and generating contradictions. For instance, the otherwise concealed steel construction is exposed on the side faces. On each side, an exposed beam up to three metres high joins the main support at its far end at an acute angle that resists bending. At the point where beam and support converge, the inner roof cladding continues on the side end wall. But grey sheeting, not the corrugated sheeting of the roof, covers its outer side. The masonry in this wall supports not only the roof but also part of the floor above the underground car park. The car park entrance thus becomes a cleft in the terrain instead of a hole.

The other end of the roof rests on two sloping concrete supports in the waiting area. With a length of over 60 metres, the longest roof beam extends diagonally across the space and requires the additional support of cables underneath, this being the only part of the structure that protrudes from the green covering. The architects talk about ëpragmatic solutionsí and are prepared to accept the untidy junctions occasioned by the complicated geometry of the structural steelwork: ëThe space is more important than some corner or other.

Pragmatic or not, it is exactly the ëpoorí details of the structure that the architects use to generate atmosphere in their design. For example, they attach the sheeting with visible cords, like sails, to plain steel pipes. Elsewhere they are deliberately more elaborate. Delicate neon tubes trace the undersides of the main beams, and handmade cement tiles from Morocco domesticate the wall of the waiting area, providing a buffer against the almost overwhelming spaciousness of the terminal. The coach terminal brings the whole wide world into provincial Switzerland.