A house for research and education in the new Rosental-Mitte district.
Three volumes build an ensemble and form an urban configuration, a campus en miniature. With its division into three structures, the House for Research and Education is able to act and react in a differentiated way vis-à-vis the city – permeable, open and small-scale towards the neighbourhood on Maulbeerstrasse, inviting and moderate large-scale towards the future Bleichestrasse.
The former Sihlpapier site, located in the south of Zurich, in Manegg, is characterized both by a special lenticular form and by an island-like isolation. The river Sihl, the Sihlkanal, as well as the forest embankment to the highway and the highway itself have a shape-forming and isolating effect. The centered traffic axes of the cantonal road and the SZU railroad line form two similarly shaped sites with slightly different characteristics: The western side tends to be better connected to traffic and nonetheless more quietly situated against the Sihl than the eastern side, behind the SZU tracks and constrained by the highway. The central plots between these main traffic routes create a kind of backbone.
