GISA-Estate Affoltern, Zurich

Breaking of scales: industrial lump vs. scattered settlement:
At Binzmühlestrasse, the change in scale between post-industrial city and suburban scattered settlement becomes more vivid than ever. What should be the orientation of the future settlement?

Fusion of scales: the large form with the small heads:
We liked the permeable fringes of the street in the suburb: The greenery of tall trees, shrubs and hedges spills out everywhere between the modest buildings. The new settlement joins here. That is why the five houses along the street are deliberately restrained in form, shape and rhythm, and low in silhouette. Between them, there is intensive greening and flowering, because there are no substructures, but plenty of space and unsealed surfaces.

The trees and the 'genius loci':
The valuable trees determine the 'genius loci', the spirit of the place. All of them are to remain standing when new buildings are constructed here - only one 'future tree' has to give way.

Square, alley, courtyard: open space shapes buildings, not the other way around:
These open spaces are powerfully characterized and clearly differentiated from each other. Every child can name them: Alley, square, courtyard. This creates attractive addresses. The square forms the threshold between the city and the settlement. The alley is densely lined with buildings. It is open to everyone who travels through the neighborhood on foot or by bicycle. The courtyard is wide, lushly overgrown and lined with gardens and airy balconies.

The sun determines the arrangement of the buildings:
East-west-facing apartments can be much lower than north-south-facing ones, which receive sun only at midday - because the sun passes by them twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. After all, the existing GISA housing development is also east-west oriented. When it was built on a greenfield site, it was obvious that solar radiation determined the building orientation. In order to be able to preserve as many of the existing trees as possible in the future, it is obvious to orient the new houses in the same way as the old ones.

Few large open spaces instead of many small ones: 
The structural densification of Zurich's garden city neighborhoods is almost always accompanied by a loss of generosity for the open spaces. In contrast, the concentration of building masses and the bundling of green spaces in the new GISA development creates a generosity that can be compared with the residential block edges of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Birkenhof in Kreis 6.