Flexible and sustainable city building block
The competition-winning design by EM2N for completing the urban block on Badenerstrasse in Zurich takes up the existing geometries of the place as the central structural element and integrates the existing high-rise by Werner Stücheli in the urban mesh. The new building is a robust and resilient structure that not only optimises operating energy but also minimises to the greatest possible extent the amount of grey energy used to produce it. Additionally, as a flexible urban building block, it has the typological potential to accommodate a variety of different uses in the long term. In spirit of the circular economy the building is conceived as a depot of materials, which, in its construction, uses grey energy optimised materials and components in such way that, in the long term, they can be put to new use as repeatedly as possible.
