Use as a meeting room Astra builds pavilion for 3.8 million - now it's empty

The Federal Roads Office (Astra) built a pavilion for 3.8 million Swiss francs. It now stands empty and is occasionally used as a meeting room.

The building, which is located on the so-called Banana Site at the Wankdorf highway junction in Bern, was intended to be a showcase project. Equipped with an interactive panoramic wall and a "holo-deck", it was intended as a place where visitors could experience and understand the four planned highway projects.

But then, on November 24, 2024, one of these four projects was rejected by the people. The Federal Roads Office (Astra) pushed ahead with the pavilion despite the announced referendum against the freeway expansion.

As a result, the opening of the pavilion no longer seemed relevant, so the opening was postponed and the pavilion remains mostly unused.

And with the decision by Transport Minister Albert Rösti at the end of January, almost all of the planned highway projects - the Bypass East bypass and the expansion between Wankdorf and Weyersmannshaus - are facing an uncertain future.

Pavilion is being used as a meeting room

The pavilion is therefore currently being used as a meeting room, although Astra does not provide any information on the frequency of use. The opening is now planned for spring 2025, as theTages-Anzeigernewspaper writes. However, many of the planned exhibition contents are outdated. Astra will therefore have to adapt its concepts in order to make sensible use of the pavilion.

The total cost of building the pavilion is CHF 3.8 million. The media technology from Auviso alone costs 1.2 million francs. And the concept by the German agency Mediaville costs half a million francs, as Astra confirmed to the newspaper.

Astra has been repeatedly criticized in recent years, above all by the Swiss Federal Audit Office, for awarding too many contracts by private treaty without inviting tenders. These included many contracts awarded to the Farner agency, for which the fee was sometimes only agreed after the contract was awarded.

Professors such as communications specialist Iwan Rickenbacher have publicly criticized the fact that administrative communication at Astra is systematically outsourced to external agencies.

The editor wrote this article with the help of AI.