The Triemlifussweg and its surrounding as it can be seen today is the result of multiple urban projects of mass housing happening between the 1940s and the 1970s. The monocultural dimension of the planning and the large garden city spaces separating the building leave little place for interaction between inhabitants or with the outside world. Thus, rare buildings adopting nondomestic function, such as shops, bakeries and community rooms got an important social value. These elements are connected both to the isolated courtyards of modernist apartments units and to the public realm of Zürich. Their small scale, the uniqueness of their detailing and the flexibility of their indoor space made them ideal elements for appropriation. Their functions evolved over time and habits making them adaptive social infrastructure.

Most of the buildings in the neighbourhood are reaching the end of their lifecycle. Plot by plot, the modernist neighbourhoods around the Triemlifussweg are replaced by contemporary volumes. By taking advantage of the luxurious green environment of the garden cities and the flexibility of simple slab structure, four projects are designed with the aim to bring a diversity of functions and details within, around and between some of the most disconnected blocks. Taking inspiration in the existing social nodes of Triemli, they give hint of a process to increase the diversity and the number of appropriable spaces. Minor changes and additions are used to reveal qualities from the existing situation and promote a progressive transformation of the plots over the unsustainable replacement constructions process as well as its resulting waste production and gentrification.