Museum of Communication

About the building

On Helvetiastrasse in the Kirchenfeld quarter stands a flat-roofed building that looks almost closed, with limestone slabs on its facades. It is L-shaped: a short single-storey wing along the street was meant for the neighbourhood post office, while the three-storey main wing running west houses the museum. Staircases and a goods lift are separate volumes, attached to the block or pushed halfway into it, and they give the facades their accents.

The building was put up from 1986 to 1989 to plans by the Bern architect Andrea Roost for the general directorate of the PTT, the former Swiss postal and telecommunications authority. It is a reinforced concrete frame with hung limestone facades. It was conceived as part of a larger cultural heritage centre in the lower Kirchenfeld, planned by the Burgergemeinde, the city and the canton but only partly realised. Inside, the floors are organised as halls with three aisles; a ramp links the ground and first floors into one continuous exhibition area. The city's heritage office lists the building as worth preserving and highlights its urban design, spatial concept and choice of materials.

The museum itself is older. In 1893 Anton Säger, later head of the postal service, issued a first instruction concerning a postal museum; from 1901 objects were collected systematically, and in 1907 a postal museum opened in the head post office at Bollwerk. In 1933 it moved to the basement of the new Alpine Museum on Helvetiaplatz, and in 1949 it became the PTT Museum. In 1990 it moved into its own building on Helvetiastrasse.

When the PTT was split into Swiss Post and Swisscom in 1997, the two companies set up a foundation that has since run the house as the Museum of Communication, showing communication in general alongside the history of post and telecommunications. In 2017 a new core exhibition opened in which staff members seek conversation with visitors; for this the museum received the Council of Europe Museum Prize in 2019. Today it is part of Bern's museum quarter. A detail on the facade: the chrome-nickel steel relief "Kommunikation" by Peter Stämpfli, made around 1986.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Helvetiastrasse 16 · Wikipedia (de): Museum für Kommunikation Bern · Wikipedia (en): Museum of Communication (Bern) · Wikidata: Q1954633