ETH Zürich

Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design
Prof. Dr. Alexander Lehnerer
Department of Architecture
HIL G 74
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5
8093 Zurich, Switzerland

The City as the Critical Project of Architecture

Ever since architecture discovered the city as its domain, there has been a critical and fruitful debate regarding how these two relate to one another. One is clearly always part of the other, is comprised by the other, sometimes contained in the other. At least the city and architecture always condition one another. The city is the one big project of society and therefore naturally challenges architecture as a cultural project. The productive and intellectual impetus of the inconclusive negotiation between the two lies exactly in the confrontation of the individual with the collective, text with context, the political with the planned, and the autonomous with the cultural. These dialectical moments of inquiry outline what the discipline of architecture has described as a third typology, an architectural project that operates between two seemingly contradictory states creating friction that leads to alternative and subversive outcomes.

This search for a third typology has led us to investigate collective form and its physicality as a result of historical and contemporary processes, as well as projective/speculative conception—at a scale larger than a building and smaller than a city. The methodological analysis of collective form includes comparative observations, critical commentary, and the search for strategic tools that can be employed to simultaneously shape and understand our built environment in order to produce specific public qualities as cumulative effects. The results are thematic formats that can be read as critical discursive urban projects, both as research and pedagogy, but never obliged to only one single scale.

In this third typology, between the big and the small, theory and project, sign and object, the speculative reality of architecture develops its truly striking potential.

The individual research projects are conducted within three disciplinary modes of inquiry: the history of architecture, the mediums in which architecture communicates, and architecture’s disciplinary versus cultural concerns. Within this research framework, the chair searches for examples, narratives, rationales, and manifestos of how architecture is both a product of as well as an influential force behind the form and culture of the world’s infinite anthropogenic fabric.

Roadblocks

Analysis

Langstrasse is condensed in a defined perimeter, showing a functional diversity and a striking relationship between the street width and building height. This perimeter is characterized by a collaged morphology of closed and semi-closed urban blocks combined with old working class houses. In addition, a maze of one-way streets results in high traffic at rush-hours and intersects the public realm.

The potential of Langstrasse as a perimeter lies beyond the realm of the street. A big variety of forgotten courtyards are hidden behind the streets. However, their potential has been neglected so far. Many of them are too dark and are rather used for technical space (parking, trash and bike racks) rather than for public use. Only some of them actually have an attractive space used for small pop-up restaurants, bike workshops and hairdressers. Those spaces are composed with a set of large and small scale elements that make a courtyard so unique. A collection of tunnels or passages lead into the courtyard and at the same time give access to the housing facilities. Most of the courtyards are filled with balconies and access galeries, since the light and noise constellations are better here than on the street. The groundfloor itself is filled with even smaller scale elements such as external staircases, benches and sunshades.

Design

In order to improve the courtyards at Langstrasse, three large street intersections are filled in with a new buildig program. The borders of these infill buildings – or ‘roadblocks’ – are neighbouring party walls, continuous staircases and passages. Since these roadblocks can not function by themself due to the building depth and light constellation, some of the neighbouring blocks are incorporated into one new big building. However, the existing party walls and cores of those neighbours are incorporated into the new design and used as a primary structural element. Furthermore, the new designs emphasize the elements of the courtyards found at Langstrasse which were hidden before and translates the former streets into one new courtyard. The topography of the former streets is kept and filled up with gravel, showcasing boulevards with trees, benches and planters. Since Langstrasse is being cut off by two roadblocks, the public transport is redirected around the perimeter, deminishing the traffic and noise.

The following design focuses on one roadblock, showing a diverse program with residential units on the sides, retail areas, a small office and an institute on the groundfloor. At the same time it also negotiates with one neglected neighbouring building that interacts with the new building. It allows for new relationships between the inside and outside and its programm. The building incorporates a courtyard itself and can be accessed by the public via two passages from two sides. The floors above contain residential units, the institute and more office facilities and create different layout patterns.

Project by: Marcus Maier