This is joint work with Michael Batanin.
We introduce two coloured operads in sets - the lattice path operad and a cyclic extension of it - closely related to iterated loop spaces and to universal operations on cochains. As main application we present a formal construction of an E2-action (respectively, a framed E2-action) on the Hochschild cochain complex of an associative (respectivelhy, a symmetric Frobenius) algebra.