Rotation, Stacking.

Facts: University Project at the ETH Zürich | Chair Arthur Rüegg | 2003.

Architecture: Wolfgang Rossbauer.

An area of railway tracks extend like a wasteland near Zurich, right up to the city’s main station. Next to the tracks, on an artificial border to the city - filled mainly in the 19th century with blocks - medium-sized apartments with integrated offices are to be created.

Freely constellated „rusting” towers, with facades made out of industrial metal panels, mark the undefined border. Alleys and small squares, as an intimation to the medieval part of Zurich, stretch over the area.

The concrete structure of each tower is a result of the upwards-spiralling arrangement of the apartments. Cantilever walls separate the apartments. The floors are either suspended or supported by the walls. The results of this kind of construction are large rooms without columns and glass corners with direct view to the city.

Each apartment has two different entrances, one representative into the office zone, one private into the living zone. The overlapping of both zones - of both forms of using them - is the living-room, which is two stories in height. Every apartment is orientated to all four sides of the tower and so defines it. The tower itself is a defining component of the city.