At the intersection of Überlandstrasse and Winterthurerstrasse in Schwamendingen, a range of built visions are currently coming together: most strikingly, the modernist Hirzenbach estate. Adjacent to it lies the Schwamendingen “garden city,” built by city architect Albert Steiner in the 1940s and 1950s. And finally, the car infrastructure: the four-lane Überlandstrasse, the motorway on the opposite side of the Glatt, a petrol station, and two car dealerships. Taken together, these developments add up above all to one thing: an image of the agglomeration. There are hardly any shopping opportunities. The street is not a place to stroll, but a means of getting ahead quickly by car. The intersection is not a square. And the green spaces between the houses are scarcely used.

The size and location of the site quickly made it clear that we could not simply continue building on the existing fabric; a larger vision for the entire area is necessary. The vision of this project—building a piece of city—starts from the public realm: a new street space and square are intended to create a place that makes the neighbourhood attractive beyond one’s own private apartment. Street space and square, in the traditional sense, mean a contained, defined space. This established the initial disposition of the volumes: they do not orient themselves to a geometry of the Hirzenbach estate that is only comprehensible in a figure-ground plan, but to the course of the street. I have tried to preserve as much as possible of the existing buildings that form the backbone of the street-front development. The new buildings are positioned so that, together with the two nine-storey slab blocks of the Hirzenbach estate, they form two courtyards.