Zurich - The Home of Freitag

Zurich wasn't on my list of traveling, at least not this early. But since that my demanding friend was insisting to go to Switzerland without knowing anything about it, I decided to make a trip there, to experience the watch world and my beloved Freitag.

Let's take a look at Freitag brothers' invention, the Freitag bags:



Freitag (Friday in German), which was founded in the early 90's by the Freitag brothers - Daniel and Markus, sells bags made out of recycle materials, thick tarp from truck, seat belt for strap, and bicycle inner tube for seams. These bags quickly became a piece of classic Zurich design. I fell in love with Freitag some years ago and got my first Freitag bag in Tokyo, and bought another one last year in Milan. What's so cool about them?

Well, since that each bag is made of the actual truck tarpaulin, you will never find two that look the same. Each bag is unique. It's durable, it's recycled, a brand new bag looks really old and yes it smells, and you can customize one online deciding what truck tarps you wanna cut. With the creativity from the Freitag brothers and the design look of everything, the bag, the box, the store, the display, one of the messenger bags is in the MoMA collection in New York. All that above gives Freitag a very strong personality.

So I made a trip to the home of Freitag, Zurich, and the first place I wanted to go was the Freitag flagship store. The Freitag brothers had the idea of making these bags while watching all those trucks with containers going from Germany to Italy, passing by Zurich. The same idea was done again to the Zurich flagship store emphasizing their concept. The store is built of 17 real truck containers, yes they are for real. And at the top, there's this "Truckspotting" area for you to enjoy the view of the highway, railroads, and the train station. Yes the view isn't spectacular, it's actually kind of ugly. But hey, Freitag is born in that ugly industrial looking place, and I do think the "Truckspotting" thing is a very clever viral marketing strategy.

Enough with the BS talk, let's see how Swiss architects Annette Spillmann and Harald Echsle realize Freitag brothers' concept into a store.



Me relaxing in the F container:




Another angle:


The F bike at the store front:


The interior is very attractive too: (This girl would not get out of my sight)


From the top, yes this is the truckspotting:


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Since that I'm writing about cool architecture in Zurich, I may as well write about another world famous architecture here, Centre Le Corbusier.

It is designed by the great architect Le Corbusier, commissioned to him by his interior designer friend Heidi Weber in the 60's. Le Corbusier died just a year after the construction began and it became the last piece of architecture work done by him.

This guy wouldn't leave me alone either:




The other side: