Description
The Zollhaus project is located on a 5000 m² site directly adjacent to the railroad tracks and just a few hundred meters away from Zürich Central Station[1]. It was ready for occupancy in 2021, took innovative and previously implemented floor plans of Community Households and Cluster Apartments and continued to evolve them. The developer was n the Kalkbreite Cooperative, founded in 2007 and client for the housing complex Kalkbreite completed in 2014. As in this earlier project,The property Was again located close to the city center of Zurich, and also unites two districts of the city. The architectural competition was won by Enzmann Fischer Partner in 2015. The three buildings of the Zollhaus project all focus on different areas of use, with each having its own open and outdoor spaces, and together comprise a total of 56 residential units. The core of the project is the Forum, which stretches across three stories of the main building to provide an array of different usable spaces, drawing in the surrounding neighborhoods. In addition to living space, areas for culture, dining, sales, healthcare, offices, and childcare were included.
The parameters for collective living were defined in the competition specifications. In addition to the one-and-a-half to nine-and-a- half-room apartments, the eight hall apartments are also given high planning priority. Hall apartments are empty residential spaces that open up over one-and-a-half stories and that, with the exception of technical installations such as bathrooms and kitchens, can be finished by the residents themselves. The basic idea of hall apartments originates from the squatter scene, in which personal housing landscapes are self-built within empty office buildings. Integrating this often illegal type of appropriation into a legal building process such as the Zollhaus project requires a great deal of assertiveness and, due to building regulations and the limited financial resources of future residents, must be continually readjusted.[2]
Exterior view of the building on a difficult site, directly adjacent to the railroad tracks
Interior view of the hall
Model view showing the Forum in the center of the building
Footnotes
„Genossenschaft mit Gleisblick. Wohn- und Geschäftshaus in Zürich von Enzmann Fischer Partner“, 28 April 2022, Baunetz, accessed on 21 March 2023.
https://www.kalkbreite.net/zollhaus/, accessed on 25 March 2019; and statements by Nina Schneider at the Wohnen im Rohbau event hosted by the Kraftwerk1 Cooperative on 11 March 2019., accessed on 25 March 2019; and statements by Nina Schneider at the Wohnen im Rohbau event hosted by the Kraftwerk1 Cooperative on 11 March 2019.
Originally published in: Susanne Schmid, Dietmar Eberle, Margrit Hugentobler (eds.), A History of Collective Living. Forms of Shared Housing, Birkhäuser, 2019. Translation by Word Up!, LLC, edited for Building Types Online.