“Our house is open”

The new distribution centre at Zurich’s Limmatplatz opened in 1931 and included a «display path». This aerial walkway was open to the public and allowed visitors to see how goods were processed, filled and loaded into the sales vans.

Today, we would speak of transparency; in the image film Familie M in 1949, it is called laconic: ” We have no secrets. The more we see of our work, the more we like it.“ Gottlieb Duttweiler implements this principle in architecture when he rents a textiles factory on the Zurich Limmatplatz in 1931 and has it converted into the new Migros AG distribution centre.
In the central hall, a walkway is constructed, accessible from the street and ”always unguarded“. From this ”display path”, visitors can observe the loading of the sales vans, how the cooking oil is bottled and the coffee roasted. There is also a telephone which allows ”any comments and suggestions to be passed on to the management“. Since 1947, an additional brochure with information on the history of the company and a plan of the display path is also available.
The façade on Limmatstrasse has large display windows allowing passers-by to see how the employees pack the butter and cooking fat.
At the stairway to the display path, Gottlieb Duttweiler has positioned the first sales vans as an effective advertisement. A notice board announces to the visitors: ”He got it done.”