Charlotte Bitter

How to keep — let alone list — a building that is no longer there? Through a careful reading of the history of the Autonomes Jugendzentrum Zürich, this master thesis proposes a project for the Sihlquai parking that combines a new bus station with a revived youth centre, echoing the one that inhabited the site in the early 1980s. Through a careful overlay of usages, temporalities and architectural languages, the design ‘produces’ a consciously ambiguous set of buildings: what is new and what might have been already there? What is re-enacted and what is still to emerge through usage and appropriation? Where does the bus station end and the youth centre begin? The long-distance bus station that the city plans to build on the site will serve only a decade of use. As such, this master thesis also advocates for a more sustainable future project on the site, also re-introducing one of its most emblematic histories.