Leonie Wagner

Four ‘Junggesellenheime’ or bachelor houses at the Brauerstrasse bear witness to the history of Swiss post-war ‘Gastarbeit’. Originally built in 1965 to temporarily house SBB guest workers, these buildings were never meant to last beyond a decade. No less than 57 years later, they are still standing — and in use. This master thesis takes this as a cue to assert that migration is no longer a temporary phenomenon, but a new and structural reality. The effects of climate change will only enforce this: more and more people will be — and remain — on the move and we need adapted architectures to accommodate them. The master thesis proposes to keep the current use on the site but to replace the existing buildings. Four new buildings accommodate three separate room typologies integrated in different apartment sizes, and offer different gradients of privacy and collectivity. They respond to a set of values and spatial needs distilled through extensive fieldwork and literature study on what it means to make a home in displacement.