ETH Zurich - Building LEE

Areal Zentrum, Oberer Leonhard, new building for research and teaching. 2007-2015

PROCEDURE
Open two-stage gerenal planning competition, 2007-2008, 1st prize

CUSTOMER
Swiss Confederation
c/o ETH Zurich, Real Estate Infrastructure Division

CONTRACTORS (new build)
Planning consortium PG ETH LEE:
Architect: Fawad Kazi Architekt GmbH, Zurich
Structural engineering: WaltGalmarini AG, Zurich
Building services: Amstein + Walthert AG, Zurich
Sub-planners:
Project management: Hämmerle Partner AG, Zurich
Construction management: Itten + Brechbühl AG, Zurich
Facade planning: Atelier P3 AG, Zurich
Landscape architect: Hager Partner AG, Zurich
Building physics, sustainability: Amstein + Walthert AG, Zurich
Fire protection: Amstein + Walthert AG, Zurich
Lighting designer: Amstein + Walthert AG, Zurich

CONTRACTORS (extended surroundings and conversion of existing building)
Planning consortium PG LEE Conversion:
Architect: Fawad Kazi Architekt GmbH, Zurich
Supporting structure: ACS-Partner AG, Zurich
Building services: Amstein + Walthert AG, Zurich
Site management: Jürg Waldvogel, Architekturbüro, Erlenbach
Excavation pit: Schläpfer & Partner Ingenieurbüro AG, Zurich
Pipelines: Hydraulik AG Ingenieure und Planer, Zurich
Landscape architect: Hager Partner AG, Zurich
Geologist: Gysi Leoni Mader AG, Buchs

TEAM
Fawad Kazi Architekt GmbH:
Project management: Fawad Kazi, Selami Sahin, Philipp Macke
Collaboration: Tommaso Passalacqua, Stefan Günther, Michael Flury, Sebastian Geltz, Benedikt Jäger, Stefano Murialdo, Fabian Markel, Marlen Johne, Nicole Schönfelder, Josephine Kutschbach, Luzius Stiefel, Uwe Gottfried, Daniel Lautenschlager, Pascale Siebers, Luca Riolfo, Manfred Kunz, Laura Perez

ADDRESS
Leonhardstrasse 21, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland

KEY DATA
Floor area: 18,078 m2
Building volume: 69'218 m3
Planning: from 2008
Realization: 2010-2015
Construction costs: approx. CHF 120 million
Art on the building: Fawad Kazi Architekt GmbH
Labels: Minergie-Eco, GI Good indoor climate

PHOTOS
Georg Aerni, Yves Kubli, Rolf Steinegger

PUBLICATIONS
Reference books:
Time Space Existence, Venice Architecture Biennale, ed. GAA Foundation - European Cultural Centre, 2018, pp. 166-167
Made of Beton, ed. Mettler Studer BUK ETHZ, 2018, chapter 13
Elementare Bücher zum konstruktiven Entwerfen, ed. Institut Konstruktives Entwerfen, ZHAW Departement Architektur, Gestaltung und Bauingenieurwesen, Verlag park books, 2018, pp. 208-209
Schweizer Baudokumentation 2016, 2016, Chapter B28
ETH Zürich - Gebäude LEE, ed. Christoph Wieser, Verlag park books, 2015
Baukultur in Zürich, Band Oberstrass/Fluntern, ed. Amt für Städtebau, Stadt Zürich, 2010, pp. 22-23
Trade journals:
Domus 1004 - La Città dell' Uomo, Luglio/Agosto, 2016, pp. 66-77
werk, bauen + wohnen 9-2015, 2015, pp. 68-73
TEC21 No. 45, November 6, 2015, pp. 9-10
Hochparterre 10/2014, 2014, p. 65
TEC21 No. 19/2008, May 5, 2008, pp. 8-11
Other:
Jury Report Competition New Building LEE, ed. ETH Zurich, Real Estate, Buildings Department, 2008, pp. 16-21

"The starting point of my architectural exploration is the place. Every place already exists. In this respect, every building project means building on a place, taking into account the parameters that determine and characterize the place."
- Fawad Kazi

Fawad Kazi, What will be? - Thoughts on the Architecture of the Future (excerpt), exhibition catalog, ed. Architekturforum Zürich, 2008

DESCRIPTION
The ETH Zurich LEE building was erected in the immediate vicinity of the main ETH and university buildings along Leonhardstrasse. The multi-staggered structure is subordinate to the immediate context along Leonhardstrasse thanks to the lower side wings. With its forty meter high tower, it also complements the Zurich city crown.

In addition to lecture halls and seminar rooms, the LEE building houses institute rooms of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering and the Economic Research Center of ETH Zurich. In addition to technical and storage rooms, a computer center is located in the basement. The staggering of the building structure results in two landscaped urban gardens used as recreational areas.

For the LEE building, a special series of luminaires and various pieces of furniture were developed, primarily for the representative plinth area. The basement floors and the three seismically relevant access cores are made of in-situ concrete, while the façade and the above-ground floor slabs are made of precast concrete. The ceilings are made of ribbed slabs, which ensure column-free rooms with the greatest possible flexibility of use throughout the building. The supporting structure and building services are left visible in the consistently system-separated structure. The basement floors with the marble-clad foyer areas and the timber-clad lecture theatres are an exception.

The façade is designed as a self-supporting, rear-ventilated construction. It consists of prefabricated, finely washed two-storey concrete frames and aluminum windows. The façade is also partially clad with marble.

"With remarkable morphological elasticity, a building mass that is out of scale has been pragmatically anchored in its context."
- Hans Kollhoff

A SPAZIERGANG
If you leave Zurich's main railway station and let your gaze wander over the monumental university buildings, the main university building with its majestic dome and the ETH building with its polyterrace and mighty central risalit, then you look for the exposed turquoise glass bar of the CLA and can only see parts of it. And that's good. In front of it is a huge building, but thanks to its sophisticated structure, it fits almost naturally into the context. Its tower boldly presents itself as a further building block in the structure of the historic university buildings, without concealing the fact that it is nothing more and nothing less than a new institute building, whose function is more reminiscent of an office building. Facing the rising Leonhardstrasse, the tower steps down to low side wings, which seek a very friendly connection to the neighborhood in terms of height, materiality and delicacy. The traditional development of the residential and university buildings in the surrounding area and the striking new building share a tectonic logic: the mediation between the constructive facts of a building and its appearance, which is accessible to the eye and actually to physical sensation.

The pillar façade with its pleasantly proportioned windows, which serves the slenderness of the tower, picks up on the vertical structure of the neighboring buildings. The asymmetrical tripartite division is playfully continued in the floor plan by the central positioning of the passage hall in a precarious location: the tower now appears violently displaced, its corner pillar continuing into the first floor, where it forms one of the two columns supporting the mighty entablature, each spanning three window axes. Yes, it is columns that mark the main entrance here, as they end differently to the pilaster strips under the beam. The way in which an almost unsolvable problem was solved here, namely the linking of the existing staircase to Clausiusstrasse and the main entrance with separate access to the auditorium with the tower arranged to the side, is magnificent, precisely because it is by no means a flirtatious shifting of components back and forth, but follows a logic laid out in the task and the context, not slavishly, but artistically.

Hans Kollhoff, A Walk (excerpt), ETH Zurich - Building LEE, ed. Christoph Wieser, 2015

"Of course, the right keyword for LEE is classicism. You can see it. Pardon, what exactly do you see?"
- Benedikt Loderer

CLASSICISM TODAY?
A mountain of buildings on Leonhardstrasse, by no means a rebirth or continuation of Greco-Roman architectural forms. Nevertheless, there is something classical about this façade. But nobody really knows what is meant by that. Read up on Vitruvius? Too tedious, better to ask Auguste Perret. He also provides the first keyword: order. Not columnar order, simply order. The architect lays down formal rules. They apply to the entire building, every structural element and every detail obeys them.

Classicism is always tectonic. Support and load. The storeys stand above and on top of each other. The eye follows the force of gravity and the subconscious says: It holds because it stands. The colossal order of the pilasters, which diminish upwards, crosses the horizontal bands of windows, whose linked openings are in turn aligned vertically. Classicism claims that people stand, not lie, hence the upright formats. However, there is a balance between vertical and horizontal, a balance that creates calm. Classicism is never agitated.

Tectonic also means plastic. Not skin, but bark. The shadow stripes draw. The vertical ones are the dashes and the horizontal ones the signatures of the façade. It awakens in the sunlight. Classicism always has something Mediterranean about it, is always addicted to light, "le jeu savant, correct et manifique des volumes assemblés sous la lumière", as Le Corbusier wrote in Vers une architecture.

The symmetry, the backbone of classicism, is only subliminally present. Nevertheless, the tower has a central field with seven to eleven axes, but this is not given any distinction. The all-defining classical element, the one that provides the numerical verse of the styles, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, the column, is missing. Auguste Perret still had it. This raises the question of whether the keyword classicism is really self-evident. Sigfried Giedion already knew this in his dissertation published in 1922: "Classicism is not a style. Classicism is a coloration."

Benedikt Loderer, Classicism today? (excerpt), ETH Zurich - Building LEE, ed. Christoph Wieser, 2015

"Irritating and surprisingly self-evident at the same time, the tower appears next to the familiar chimney of Otto Rudolf Salvisberg's district heating plant, the technical landmark in Zurich's skyline. They stand there in a similar shade of color, as if nothing had happened, as if only a little bit had been added, built in front."
- Marianne Burkhalter

Marianne Burkhalter, Yellow Submarine (excerpt), ETH Zurich - Building LEE, ed. Christoph Wieser, 2015

Fawad Kazi Architekt GmbH
Langstrasse 14
8004 Zurich
Switzerland