Urban Development Bremgarten Station - 3rd Prize

Because Bremgarten has been photographed conspicuously from the air - probably because of the picturesque Reuss bend, the closed old town or the barracks - the development of the settlement can be traced particularly vividly here.

From the entrance to the medieval town, the Obertor, the streets radiate out into the open countryside to Wohlen, Zug, Lucerne and Zurich. Around the turn of the century, houses were built in loose succession along these arterial roads: Most of them were small houses, many of them standing on gables, so that they looked like onlookers watching the hustle and bustle of the streets. It is they who define the scale of suburban development over long stretches and for a long time, before the large commercial and infrastructure buildings later become established in the development pattern of the suburbs. This small-scale, compact basic layout of the buildings along the street is characteristic of Bremgarten. And therefore it would be wrong to condense Zürcherstrasse into the 'Rue Corridor'!

The second strong characteristic of the place when viewed from the air is the structuring of the landscape with rows of trees. They are omnipresent and illustrate the cultural transformation of the landscape: sometimes as avenues shading the streets, mostly as rows of fruit trees, here as wind protection in an open landscape, there as fortification of the banks of the Reuss (poplars). This 'vegetation lane' becomes the urban planning leitmotif: Zürcherstrasse is transformed into a tree-lined boulevard. Because the perimeter of the development is a considerable length of Zürcherstrasse, the new avenue can also integrate the mighty plane trees between the Obertor and the district school, thus adding lasting value to the street scene, which today is so hostile.

These two characteristics of the town - the row of houses along the street and the rows of trees in the landscape - become the starting point for the design: Zürcherstrasse becomes a boulevard in the shade of the avenue trees, whose spaces in between are populated by houses. In fact, the houses themselves resemble trees: above their narrow trunk rises a widely projecting crown that offers shelter and shade to as many people as possible, while the crowns themselves are used for living and working.

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