Barracks area Zurich
What to do with the barracks, competition entry. 2001
PROCESS
Open ideas competition, 2001, 1st prize
Organizer: Architektur Forum Zürich
TEAM
Fawad Kazi
DESCRIPTION
Town square
The barracks and the arsenals are being used for commercial purposes - offices, restaurants, businesses.
The complex will be structurally expanded in the Kasernenwiese area with a flexible arcade structure.
Kept free from the usual, a town square is created here.
This will be underpinned by four parking levels, which will guarantee the necessary frequency and relieve congestion in the city center.
PUBLICATION
Hochparterre 11/01 - Kaserne, magazine for architecture and design, number 11, November 2001, p. 18
"This large urban stage with its long shadows would be the new urban center of Aussersihl, an urban salon of appropriate proportions."
- Competition jury
DER GROSSE HOF
The information is brief but clear. The entire barracks area will be commercially exploited, i.e. built up with new buildings. A town square framed by arcades will be created in the center, with four parking levels below, which will "guarantee the necessary frequency and relieve congestion in the city center".
The jury was surprised. Firstly, about the direct access to the building fabric. What is there is reused, what is new is built in. The proposed floor plan could be the result of a long development process. Future building historians would be able to read the change from military to commercial quarter from the layers of the substance. The entire barracks ensemble would become a single building. However, the jury felt that the armory wing, which borders the square, would have to remain standing. Keywords such as Palais Royal in Paris or Plazza Real in Barcelona, but also caravanserai were mentioned. There was talk of "metaphysical" and a "trigger for urban longing".
Nevertheless, the jury was well aware that this was also a commercial calculation. The barracks site is a piece of land. However, the project has surprising urban planning features. Three car-free courtyards are being created, which can be accessed through the buildings. The ceremonial arcade courtyard is an urban building type that exists only twice in Zurich: in the Zentralhof and Kappelerhof next to the upper Bahnhofstrasse. The large, enclosed square, a hard, urban vessel without a single tree, with its consistent orientation towards the city, convinced the jury with its decisive stance.
Hochparterre 11/01 – Kaserne, magazine for architecture and design, issue 11, November 2001, p. 18 (excerpt)
"Park or city. The park seems obvious. There is a lack of greenery in District 4, but if you move away from the neighborhood point of view, the opportunity of the city is more tempting. For example, my favorite project by Fawad Kazi. He proposes a huge city square with a surrounding arcade and integrates the barracks and the arsenals into the urban ensemble. He actually acts as if Gustav Gull had brazenly continued Johann Jakob Müller's work here around 1900."
- Benedikt Loderer
Benedikt Loderer, Die Kasernenrevue – A review by Benedikt Loderer / Stadtwanderer, The barracks song based on Weill's "Macky Messer," image 10: The town square (excerpt)
