The Lindt Chocolate Competence Foundation presents a multimedia information space about chocolate at the Lindt & Sprüngli headquarters in Kilchberg/ Zurich: The Lindt Home of Chocolate has the aim of contributing towards the future of Switzerland as a business location for chocolate for the long-term. Different approaches and staging formats convey the national and international significance of Swiss chocolate and allow visitors to experience chocolate in many ways. The new building hosts a chocolate museum which presents the history and production of chocolate to a wide public, a training and research facility as well as a Lindt Chocolateria where chocolate fans can produce their own sweet delicacies.

Borne along by the aroma of chocolate, visitors proceed on a tour of discovery on the first floor of the building. Sounds, smells, media stations and visitor-participation systems allow them to become part of the different scenarios. Designed individually, each exhibition room communicates through the senses and with information to convey an aspect of the world of chocolate.

At first, the visitors travel to a cocoa plantation in Ghana where they learn everything about the cultivation, harvesting, fermentation and drying of cocoa beans – as well as about the quality assurance process. The room "Chocolate History" is all about the 5,000 years history of chocolate, while the room "Swiss Pioneers" conveys how Switzerland became the “home of chocolate”. The subsequent time tunnel "From Past to Present" illustrates the changes in the manufacture and marketing of Swiss chocolate from 1900 until the year 2000.

And how does chocolate production function today? Visitors find this out in the "Production" room, which is based on an actual factory. The darkened adjacent room with the name "Chocolate Cosmos" finally places chocolate as a product in a global context before visitors are taken to the "Chocolate Heaven" where they can taste a sample of Lindt products.

Finally, the visitors cross a bridge over the foyer of the building to reach the "Innovation Lab". This area concerns some questions about the future. The heart of the "Innovation Lab" is a real testing system. Augmented animation enables an X-ray view into the insides of the machines. The Chocolate Tour ends with a chocolate souvenir: A small bar of chocolate from the testing system, packaged in a golden ball, rolls through a lovingly designed marble run before it falls into the hands of the visitor.

General Contractor Exhibition, Scenography

ATELIER BRÜCKNER

Light- and Media Planning with

iart

Architecture

Christ & Gantenbein

Photography

ATELIER BRÜCKNER / Michael Reiner