Probstei Affordable Housing, Schwamendingen

Client: Siedlungsgenossenschaft Sunnige Hof

Place: Schwammendingen, Zurich

Date: 2022 Competition

Type: Residential

Area: 11395m²

Budget: CHF 55 Million

AZPA

Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Ivaylo Nachev, Miguel Bello, Eleonora D’Agostino

DJG Landscape

Daniel Jauslin, Niccolo Centrone

AZPA+DJG Landscape+WMM+HKLS+Drees&Sommer

Our overall massing strategy has been to concentrate the residential units in compact towers, located alongside Dubendorfer Strasse, spaced at the maximum distance to enhance air movement and biodiversity of the cold-air channel from Zürichberg. The ground will be treated like a linear park along the street, punctuated with the towers at regular intervals.

We are maximizing the heights within the 7 + 1 level regulations in order to minimize the building footprint, to preserve the natural ground as much as possible.

Following the natural slope, we propose to use the edge of Dubendorfer Strasse as a water-retention/bioswale landscape feature. The increased airflow and the water-retention feature will contribute to reduce heat island effects.

Our main ambition has been to keep low construction costs by designing very efficient floor plans using the highest standards of sustainable construction. We propose to build the entire complex using very compact and efficient timber buildings.

We have avoided using access corridors, which are not only costly, but also lower the quality of the residences by exposing the units to the traffic of neighbours to access the homes.

The tower typologies have been designed to provide the required variety of typologies in the complex, grouping the different types in order to give access to four units in every floor, so that we can optimize the vertical circulation cores.

We have designed the units with maximum compactness, grouping the toilets and the kitchens in the centre of the block in order to optimize the use of the façade for the living spaces and the bedrooms. Compactness is our first argument of environmental efficiency: the façade ratios are 0,55-0,65 m2/m2 surface and 0.18-0,21 m2/m3 volume.