Das Unfertighaus

Constructing Ongoingness

Das Unfertighaus explores a strategy of Weiterbauen in order to re-evaluate the urban development in Zurich dominated by Ersatzneubauten. Taught by user-driven interventions it perceives the built, uses and values as unfinished and modifiable.
By promoting the notion of the ongoing, the thesis proposes an approach that engages with the richness and complexity of our urban and social fabric, in which the existing is maintained and preserved in co-creation, taking tangible and intangible values along in time.

Das Unfertighaus activates past, present and projected realities connected to a site as its own reference and inspiration to build upon encountered potentials through the methods of adaptation, appropriation, reassessment, repurposing and sampling.
Along 9 principles the strategy is being tested on the Sihlquai. A series of interventions seeks to enter a dialogue between the embedded values and changing conditions in order to reveal a possible future through constructing ongoingness.