Housing Estate Altwiesen- / Dübendorfstrasse
Project Category: Studies/Competitions
A House On The Sea – 1st Phase
CreaTower I office high-rise with CreaTower II urban planning concept
In the Tech Cluster Zug, the 40-metre office high-rise Crea I and the 60-metre residential tower Crea II, the latter with a large base, will be built in two stages. Together with the sculpture Semiramis (Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich), they form a harmonious ensemble and a central square.
The ten-storey office building will serve as the headquarters of VZ Depotbank and is accessed via an arcade facing the public V-Platz. The new building has an almost square column grid with a slightly off-centre two-part core. The bays along the façades contain the workplaces in various arrangements, the meeting rooms and the recessed, two-storey terraces. The four interior bays adjacent to the core offer space for exchange and informal meetings, with spiralling double-storey rooms and open flights of helical stairs. It is this central void, with horizontal and vertical views and varying headroom, which connects the floors into a continuous, inspiring work landscape. The sequence of these diverse spaces creates a generous atmosphere, but also with scale and intimacy for the users. The terraces feature intensive planting and are arranged in staggered pairs that spatially connect three storeys.
The load bearing construction with the vault-column structure above two basement levels is 33% lighter and has 35% fewer CO2 emissions than a conventional construction. Here, the vault-column structure makes a significant contribution to sustainability with 66% less mass and 69% fewer CO2 emissions when compared to usual concrete slabs.
Rocket und Tigerli, Lokstadt, Site 4B
Building complex on the Schoeller-Hardturm sites
today: Limmatwest
The former textile dyeing plant Schoeller Hardturm AG occupies an elongated plot between the River Limmat and Hardturmstrasse (sites A and B) and another plot at right angles to this (C). After the plant had closed at the end of the 1980s and anticipating the proposed new building regulations which would upgrade the riverbanks from industrial to residential and commercial zones, the owners invited 15 architecture offices to take part in a competition.
Office building
The volume joins the series of large, compact office and industrial buildings along Hardturmstrasse. Like the usual “modern” construction of office buildings, the structure is a simple framework with solid access cores, which is clad, illuminated and ventilated by a mostly glazed envelope.
The storeys are offset to differentiate between an entrance and a delivery side at ground floor level; the cantilevered upper floors also allow for sun control to the southwest and southeast.
The ribbon windows and parapets of the facade consist of clear and etched glass in metal frames. The advertising lettering of the tenants in various colours and sizes is applied directly to the panes and visible by day as an integral component of the facades. At night, the glazing is backlit.
Residential, office and commercial complex
The main interest lay in the two accessible sides of the oblong plot between street and river.
The commercial and office buildings run the length of the plot, with the residential volumes placed on top and at right angles. Together they form a cubic mesh, which constitutes a mould for the resulting interstitial and courtyard space – a semi-private area interspersed with trees.
The building structures are subdivided corresponding to the office use of the two lower floors or the residential use of the upper floors. They are superimposed to create a structural network on the street side. Towards the river, the parts of the building are separated and stacked as offset, individually perceivable volumes.
The facade is composed of two kinds of glass (greenish industrial glazing and clear window glass) and concrete in different finishes (cast raw and artificial stone elements).
from “Werkstoff“ Edition Architekturgalerie Luzern, 1993
Development Ausserholligen VI
New laboratory building House 6
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.
University of Applied Sciences Graubünden
New Library St.Gallen
Sports Center Oerlikon
