The great density and the great emptiness
Thurgauerstrasse is an important axis between city Zurich and Airport Kloten. Both sides of the street are densely packed with houses - one side big office buildings, the other side residential settlements. But he high density does not bring great liveness to the street. The two monofunctional worlds run parallel to each other, leave the street space in between untouched, unperceived and unlived.
The empty spaces in the office buildings
Now the emptiness extend also into the office buildings. The grand atrium, once celebrated by the big international company is now underused; thousands square meters of offices is left by the users; the parking garages, range from five- storey underground and seven above, don´t find so many cars to fill up their space and will not find them in the future as well. The climate change is gradually shifting our ways of living, and it must also change the way the spaces are used.
Who needs the space and brings life to the neighborhood?
No longer valued by their original users, the rent of these office buildings is also sinking. This can be a chance for the people who normally cannot afford to stay in the ctiy. According to the statistic of the city Zurich, the manufacturing sector is driven more and more out of the city in the last decades. The close relationship between small
The future of production is reproduction
The need of shifting to a circular economy is never so urgent. The manufacture would have to deal with the challenge of material reuse in the near future. Although the wastes are highly recycled in Switzerland, the potential of reuse is extremely underdeveloped because of many different factors. The space for production in the future should provide space and facilities which reduce the obscales of reuse. The huge volumn of parking garage can be adapted to a material hub, where the discrepancy bewteen supply and demand is balanced.
Reuse the postmodern palaces with reused material
Not only the space, the representative post modern shell is also part of the story. Soon they will have nothing to represent any more as their original owners leave. But they are still speaking the old language which scare people off from alternative use. Is there also a way to reuse them, to live with them and love them? In this project, small and light structure out of reused material is appoaching the big stony blocks in a subtle way, injecting new character into them. The limitation of useable material provides stimulus for individual design, creating special moments in the space.
House of reproduction
One building - The Gallaria is taken as example to show how such intervention could be. Steel structure from demontaged factory hall is built into the atrium, providing circulation and giving the space a new appearance that overlaps the old. The atrium becomes space of production as well as celebration. The circulation also connects the park house which is converted to a facility of material reclamation, providing the source for reproduction by ateliers in the house. Open workshops give possibilties of individual reuse, education program and promotes start-ups with innovative reuse ideas, which leads to future development in the whole street.
