Looks can be deceiving; this new interior project in Zurich by NAU Architecture in collaboration with studio Drexler Guinand Jauslin, isn't a new boutique, but in fact a bank.

Located on Zurich's Kreuzplatz, this flagship branch for the bank Raiffeisen dissolves traditional barriers between customer and employee, creating a new type of 'open bank'.

Advanced technologies have made the banking infrastructure largely invisible; employees can access terminals concealed in furniture elements, while a robotic retrieval system grants 24 hour access to safety deposit boxes.

This shifts the bank’s role into becoming a light-filled, inviting environment – an open lounge where customers can learn about new products and services - and the whole feeling is more like a high-end retail environment than a traditional bank interior.

It's also kitted out with the latest gadgets too, including a touchscreen equipped info-table which not only displays figures from world markets in real time, but can be used to interactively discover the history of Hottingen, or just check the latest sports scores.

But it's the walls themselves, made out of HI-MACS® by expert fabricator Rosskopf & Partner in Germany that transform the space; acting as a membrane mediating between the open public spaces and more intimately scaled conference rooms.

Elegantly flowing, they blend the different areas of the bank into one smooth continuum, spanning from the customer reception at the front, to employee workstations oriented to the courtyard. The plan carefully controls views to create different grades of privacy and to maximise daylight throughout.

Developed with the office Rippmann Oesterle Knauss specialised in digital fabrication, portraits of the quarter’s most prominent past residents like Böklin, Semper or Sypri grace the walls, their abstracted images milled into HI-MACS® using advanced digital production techniques.

"We selected HI-MACS® for various reasons; first, we were requested to use a 'nearly non-combustible' material with an excellent fire rating value; second, we were looking for a high-tech material with warm feel; third, we needed a material that we could CNC-mill as well as bend for the curved parts” say the architects.

Photography  Jan Bitter.