Maud Haas & Caspar Bultmann

Thanks to the new „Sonderbauschriften“ in Neu-Oerlikon, AXA can now multiply the built floor space on their land by three. Their new office high-rise – fully exploiting what‘s possible – is already in planning. Our project acknowledges this as reality and tries to make the best out of it.

According to the new „Mehrwertausgleich“, Axa will have to pay 40% of the resulting surplus value of the land to the city as compensation. Instead of a financial equivalent of the respective floor area (generating the extra value), we propose to have the City be paid out in actual ownership of floor area of the new building. The approximately 5,000 m2 that go to Liegenschaften Stadt Zürich will have residential use (Stadtwohnungen). If the City of Zurich would apply this strategy on a larger scale, the city suddenly also had more control over the future of these otherwise privately owned lands.

We propose a 15-story tower with a plinth of more dwelling and less office and a torso of office only above. Each couple of two dwelling floors has two generous halls that are shared by a neighborhood of multiple households and office workers. Hopefully, the common experience of the shared hall and a little bit of grandeur together, would contribute to the development of a denser and more powerful social fabric among the dwellers and workers of Neu-Oerlikon.