Instead, I took advantage of the fact that I came to visit an exuberant, newly minted architecture professor, who in effect gave me homework for my vacation! When we first got back to Zürich, OS pulled out a city map and marked up all the new stuff that I absolutely had to see while I was here. So that was my agenda for the day!
My first destination put me back on the old 80 bus to the ETH-Hönggerberg. I got my first glimpse of how much had changed since I'd left... but before stopping back here, I continued on to Oerlikon. I'm not sure that I'd ever taken the route all the way to the end before, so that was kind of neat to see in its own right.
My first destination was the fabulously three-dimensional MFO-Park, designed by Burckhardt + Partner in collaboration with Raderschall Landschaftsarchitekten, and completed by 2002.
Like everything else, it's a bit gray and drab in early April. But with a little bit of imagination it's easy to see how amazingly awesome this place will be in just a short month or so!
This "park" is constructed on the site of a demolished factory building, and is nestled between two similar such sites.
One factory building was retained, and is now repurposed as a convention hall...
and the other was also demolished and replaced with a new building.
The MFO Park, like other current projects- including NYC's High Line- turns the definition of an urban park on its head and presents a new way of experiencing some green space of sorts.
It's like an ivy wall...
...on steroids.
It's very clean and simple in concept: a three-dimensional grid of 4m modules (8 x 24 x 4), overlaid as a rectangular volume on the site. The center of it is carved away, so that it is U-shaped in plan, four modules high, and only a single module "roof" covering the open space below.
As the modules are mostly air, defined simply by the wireframe edges that are the structure, they are habitable.
Stairs and paths wind their way around all four levels of the horseshoe...
...and poke out into the main space at various places with suspended patios.
Even the roof has its own patio!
The detailing is precise and pristine, as is to be expected...
(note the single cable that prevents each riser from being defined as "open")
...and there are several ways that the plants are encouraged to grow at all levels to make this an exuberant, yet precise, leafy realm.
In short, the essence of a beautifully detailed "Swiss box" that is the framework for an exuberant green space!
Next up: a visit to the ETH-Hönggerberg!
...or as it's now called: Campus Science City! (really?)
Apparently this name change is a sort of zoning loophole. The ETH wants to encourage more researchers and start-ups here, and in doing so wants to be able to bring amenities like grocery stores onto the campus. As a university it's not allowed, but somehow this name change makes it ok... I suppose it's trying to become something like RPI's Tech Park.
Still... weird.
A lot has changed since I was there last. The bus re-routing, underway when I was there has been completed. I remember marveling at the process involved in pounding all the Belgian block into place- so much more time-consuming than just pouring asphalt over a prepared roadbed as you'd see at home. The road now goes straight through campus instead of taking a left just before the Architecture building.
Where I once waited for the bus every evening, there are now bike racks!
The cafe has been redesigned and is now an Alumni Lounge.
I like its new interior layout, although there aren't as many seats as I seem to remember there being before; maybe everyone is directed to one of the other buildings now? (I didn't stop by the Mensa in the Physikgebäude, if it's still there.)
There's a new building behind the pavilions where I spent so many hours my first semester.
The material selection clearly was carefully chosen and certainly wasn't inexpensive.
I like the openness, shading and the possibility of usable balconies on this large, glass building.
But for all its careful detailing, it's overall impression was that of a house of cards, and so looked strangely flimsy.
There were all kinds of experimental mockups behind the architecture building- tests of what can happen at the intersection of digital design and traditional materials.
The new chemistry building is complete; they were just breaking ground for it as I was leaving.
The scale is immense,
but it does have a series of these courtyards, each with a nice view to the valley below.
And despite all of the "Science City" nonsense, some of the signage still acknowledges that this is Hönggerberg! :)
Rather than just taking the 80 bus back as was usual, I walked out along the meadow along the top of the Hönggerberg.
The drizzle stopped, and there were a few rays trying to peek through the clouds.
I love the Wanderwege signs and the accompanying "keep this farmland clean" signs!
I also love this view south, over the Schrebergärtens (community gardens), the city, the lake, and beyond to the Alps in the distance! The glass high-rise Prime Tower in the valley is new since I was last here.
It was built right next to the Hardbrücke in the industrial area west of the Hauptbahnhof, known, generally, as Zürich West. In the past decade or two, it's been undergoing a transformation into a cool, trendy place to be. It's what Long Island City aspires to do, and Williamsburg and Bushwick are more successfully achieving.
It's here that I found myself wandering, to see a few more of the sites on my list.
This is the Schiffbau. If its name is any indication, it was a boat-building factory. Today, it is a theater venue.
The doors were locked when I was there, but I could still get some sense of its impact on the neighborhood. There were trendy lounge benches placed before the main entrance,
and a great seating area along the side.
The building retained its fantastic industrial detailing and textures
while allowing for new insertions visible on the exterior.
This one seems a little unfortunate to me.
A little further down the street opened up onto a plaza with a big new building behind it. This is Puls 5.
I have to admit that at first glance I wasn't all that enamored with its overall styling, and I was reminded once again of how I sometimes feel like an architect with such unrefined (or at least un-trendy) sensibilities. I often felt that way looking at the drawings of my classmates at the ETH. Their presentations were beautifully executed, usually in stark black and white, but I could never quite appreciate them the way I felt I should.
Puls 5, on first glance absolutely struck this chord with me. It looked like just another big, non-descript, yet vaguely trendy commercial building. It could be in the Fort Point area of Boston, or bordering McCarren Park in Greenpoint/Williamsburg, or anywhere in Europe. I know it is stylish, and of the moment, but I feel like for that reason it will look very dated in about ten years.
When I got closer, though, my old pangs of insecurity vanished as I began to discover what this building was and reaffirm why I love what I do.
Puls 5 is very clearly demarcated between the lower four levels and the overhanging three levels above.
The upper levels. upon closer inspection, are residential. The pattern is really a lovely layering of movable, full-height screen panels, guardrails, and glass doors. The residents change the overall pattern as they control the light, privacy, and ventilation into their homes. The uppermost floor appears to have a balcony; the railing on the lower two floors allows the interior rooms themselves to feel like balconies!
At the lower four levels, the solid walls of alternating glass channels and vision glass at the corners dissolve towards the center into an open screen of structural glass channels. Behind it, mostly hidden from view, is the real gem at the heart of this project.
There, behind the glass screen, is an old industrial building, which from the looks of it, is about the same vintage as the Schiffbau. I couldn't tell yet just how much of the old building had been left intact... but the glass screen made for some nice shadows on the walls, blending it nicely into the whole composition.
The material selection was nice- not too pristine next to the not-pristine old bricks. The intersections between old and new seemed to happen cleanly and unobtrusively, and, I hope, with little damage to the original building!
I found it a little odd that the bricks weren't cleaned.
It did make it very apparent where new replacement bricks were inserted; perhaps this is more in keeping with European preservation pedagogy? It certainly is more in line with what was done at the Frauenkirche in Dresden, but that always seemed to me a special circumstance.
Once I walked inside, that was where it seemed most magical. Sadly, there were very large, very clear signs stating that there was no photography allowed. There seemed to be just enough official-looking people that I didn't feel like testing that prohibition. :(
Inside, I understood, and liked, the project even more. The old industrial building was a factory of some sort, and so much of it was left intact. The concrete floors still had stains embedded in them. The sawtooth clerestory skylights were still intact, as were the trusses and the machinery on tracks overhead: hooks, pulleys, everything!
The factory building, in its full four-story height, remained as a large atrium space. Groups of benches, tables and chairs clustered around the massive, steel columns. A few little kids were running around while their parents sat for a few minutes.
The two original, brick side exterior walls had been removed. In their places were open corridors of the new building, on the other side of which were the new office and retail spaces. At the second floor (3rd floor American), a skylight, sloped in towards a wide gutter at the zone of the original wall, covered the corridor. Looking up through the skylight, it was clear that the cantilever at the exterior of the residential floors happened on the interior of this ring as well. All the residences, then, had views over the roof of the factory as well as views out beyond this block!
Overall, this was a day that made me search a little harder than I'm always inclined to do on vacation without a little prodding...
But the hidden (and not-so-hidden) gems were well worth it! :)
