In December 2023, the gallery suns works occupied the top floor of the former Credit Suisse HQ in the Hochhaus zur Palme –1960s post-war first modernist high-rise in Zurich, during the last months before its imminent transformation. Originally built on the site of a villa, the tower was a subversive statement of its era, aggressively futuristic and projecting confidence in endless progress. Today it stands as a landmark amid residential and commercial neighbourhoods from the late 19th century, with only symbolic traces of its former garden preserved in the parking concrete balustrades, shaped like palm leaves. The architectural project took the form of a light installation for the gallery exhibition in the former executive offices, adding colour filters to the existing lighting system. With minimal intervention, the building’s systematic, repetitive architecture came to the fore—meticulous, distinctly Swiss, and in remarkably good condition. The illumination made tangible the tower’s fictionalised identity, drawing on the techno-erotic, millennial-tinged mood of Abel Ferrara’s New Rose Hotel, carrying both its historical ambition and its contemporary afterlife. In parallel, Kairos Studio documented the HZP on film, capturing the building in its suspended, almost fetishised state. Through short, silent sequences, the images illuminated the architectural and urban myths woven into the tower: the first and last American diner in Zurich, twisted by its Sri Lankan restaurateur; the empty shop; the Guggenheim-like parking ramp, a nod to architect’s mentor Frank Lloyd Wright; the Grand parking/hortus conclusus with palm-shaped balustrades, recalling Giger-like monsters; Zurich’s tallest tree, matching the building’s height; and the vanished top-floor Credit Suisse meeting room. The camera took on the role of a voyeur, uncovering moments suspended in time, latent tension, traces of failure, and spaces caught in flux.
