Development «Kartoni Areal, Bereich Hänggiturm», Glarus

The Hänggiturm: protagonist in the ensemble of buildings: The Ennenda-Tschachen printing and aerial hanging building is one of the largest and most impressive hanging towers that have been preserved by the canton, and is quite undoubtedly a fascinating contemporary! It goes without saying that it is the real protagonist of the site development. Because hanging towers have never been solitary structures, but have always been embedded in dense ensembles of production buildings with pressrooms, drawing rooms, machine rooms, and laundries, they will also be surrounded by lower new buildings in the future. Their longitudinal alignment follows the tower, which reinforces the connection between the existing and new buildings. Similarities between the tower and the new buildings can also be seen in the rectangular basic form of the new buildings, in their mineral base under a wooden superstructure, and in the wide overhanging gable roof.

The Hänggiturm square: protagonist in the ensemble of open spaces: with the square, the Kartoni area receives an attractive entrance and Tschachen receives a village center. This square is bordered on its long sides by two new buildings. The one in the north is slightly set back in order to give the Hänggi Tower the appropriate presence in the square named after it.

Cross support and chamber plan: We are fascinated by the structural regularity found in regional timber buildings as well as in early industrial buildings. Non-directional column grids leave room for a variety of uses, a repetitive window rhythm orders the facades. In the residential buildings, strong cross supports divide the apartments into a structure of equivalent, cell-like, connected rooms - entirely in the sense of traditional chamber floor plans typical of wooden buildings. It goes without saying that the spans are matched to the performance of the wood.

Flexibility and enfilade: What makes chamber floor plans so attractive: There are hardly any corridors, but generous rooms, whose square shape allows for very different play. Thanks to the room height of 2.6 meters, the light reaches deep into the central areas of the apartments. Because the doors are arranged in series, they create attractive enfilades that expand the chamber floor plans into flowing sequences of rooms. They make the living spaces appear larger and underline the status-high claim of the housing offer. 

The Hänggiturm - new and old in combination: Playing with the spacious rooms of the existing building with the small-scale guest house use? This approach may seem surprising at first glance. However, the small-scale nature of the new use has the great advantage of being able to integrate a complementary load-bearing structure that can cope with today's challenges (fire protection, bracing, load transfer). Thus, the aging, fragile structure is knotted together and supported, as it were, with new framework. At the same time, the existing components are stabilized and strengthened. In other words, they do not simply become obsolete accessories, but support the structure together with the supplementary structural elements! In this way, the roof truss remains cold and well ventilated, i.e. unencumbered by thermal interventions, and we will continue to experience it in the same magical twilight as today.