In collaboration with the chair of the History of Art and Architecture.
The former Wohlfahrtshaus Kantine Binzmühle has long lost its
meaning for its neighborhood and now risks demolition. However,
through a shared act of activism a dialogue evening with the
involved actors is in planning to find alternatives. One of them
could be the reading of the current Sonderbauvorschriften Neu-
Oerlikon that threaten the building, more as a framework then as
a set masterplan. A legally possible relocation of the new planned
housing on the location, and considering the building as worth of
protecting would allow to increase the overall allowed floor area
on site and make the building also economically interesting to
keep for its owner ABB.
But even once saved, the building still carries an energy burden.
Built in the 70s, it stands for a time where fossil fuels were almost
free and energy easily affordable. In opposition with the openness
of the big windows, its interior aims today at creating climatically
a perfect ‘inside’, resulting in high energy costs. But if one starts
regarding the buildings as it stands not as an obsolete structure,
incapable of achieving current energy standards, but almost as a
building just not yet finished, one can imagine a completely new
and energetically working building by means of light intervention.
An insertion of a second layer, not destroying its expressive
façade, creating an inner and in-between, climatically and
spatially, a building within a building.
The insertions should activate the in-between zones but also its context, transforming the building once more into a relevant
center of a polycentric Zurich. As an antithesis to the current
concentration of important public and cultural functions around
the inner center of Zurich, and the neglection of more peripheral
areas such as Oerlikon, this Masterthesis proposes to insert the
Haus Konstruktiv as a case study of a cultural institution into the
building and give an alternative to its current replacing into the
Löwenbräu-Areal in Kreis 5.
The insertion of a museum also elaborates on the buildings
history and brings back some of its initial ethos. Originally a
Wohlfahrthaus for the factory workers, the only building in the
area concerned about the creation of collectivity. It also had the idea of bringing art to the people and making art exhibition by the workers themselves. Following these ideas, the building
should become a museum open to everyone and a part of the
everyday urban and social fabric of Oerlikon. A hybrid between
the institutional function of a museum and more informal uses
which need less climatized rooms, daily uses, to create a place of
cultural production and social connection.
The insertion and the existing stand in dialogue with each other. They speak the same language but express themselves
differently. One is formal, one is informal, one is clean, one is
rough, one is climatizes the other more porous. When walking
through and in-between a play of transparency an opacity, of
archaic and more delicate, of wide and narrow occurs, resulting in
a variety of spatial sensation, referencing the art it hosts.