Why go
Westside offers a look at Libeskind's design on the city's western edge: an angular, wood-faced complex set over a motorway beside an S-Bahn station. The building itself is the durable draw, especially the shifting daylight in its internal plazas and the irregular window pattern across its façade.
What to look for
- Angular wood cladding wraps the complex's steel and concrete frame.
- Roof openings bring changing daylight into two internal plazas.
- Irregular windows break up the façade rather than forming a regular grid.
The full story
Westside was designed by Daniel Libeskind and completed in 2008 as a mixed shopping and leisure complex at Brünnen, west of central Bern. Its setting is part of the design: the building spans a motorway and faces an S-Bahn station, giving this outer district a built-up gateway rather than a conventional roadside mall. A steel and concrete frame carries the wood façade. Look beyond the angular outline to the way daylight enters through cuts in the roof and reaches the two plazas inside. One plaza turns toward the Brünnen landscape and the bath area; the other adjoins the hotel and cinema. The scattered windows recall a device Libeskind used at the Jewish Museum Berlin, though Westside uses it for a very different kind of building. These details make the architecture legible even if shopping is not your main reason to come.
Useful to know
- Treat Brünnen as a separate trip from an Old Town walk.
- Check current access and opening details for any particular shop, bath or cinema before traveling.