Silvan Muff

The former Wohlfahrtshaus Kantine Binzmühle has long lost its meaning for its neighborhood and now risks demolition. However, through a shared act of activism a dialogue evening with the involved actors is in planning to find alternatives. One of them could be the reading of the current Sonderbauvorschriften Neu- Oerlikon that threaten the building, more as a framework then as a set masterplan. A legally possible relocation of the new planned housing on the location, and considering the building as worth of protecting would allow to increase the overall allowed floor area on site and make the building also economically interesting to keep for its owner ABB.

But even once saved, the building still carries an energy burden. Built in the 70s, it stands for a time where fossil fuels were almost free and energy easily affordable. In opposition with the openness of the big windows, its interior aims today at creating climatically a perfect ‘inside’, resulting in high energy costs. But if one starts regarding the buildings as it stands not as an obsolete structure, incapable of achieving current energy standards, but almost as a building just not yet finished, one can imagine a completely new and energetically working building by means of light intervention. An insertion of a second layer, not destroying its expressive façade, creating an inner and in-between, climatically and spatially, a building within a building.

The insertions should activate the in-between zones but also its context, transforming the building once more into a relevant center of a polycentric Zurich. As an antithesis to the current concentration of important public and cultural functions around the inner center of Zurich, and the neglection of more peripheral areas such as Oerlikon, this Masterthesis proposes to insert the Haus Konstruktiv as a case study of a cultural institution into the building and give an alternative to its current replacing into the Löwenbräu-Areal in Kreis 5.

The insertion of a museum also elaborates on the buildings history and brings back some of its initial ethos. Originally a Wohlfahrthaus for the factory workers, the only building in the area concerned about the creation of collectivity. It also had the idea of bringing art to the people and making art exhibition by the workers themselves. Following these ideas, the building should become a museum open to everyone and a part of the everyday urban and social fabric of Oerlikon. A hybrid between the institutional function of a museum and more informal uses which need less climatized rooms, daily uses, to create a place of cultural production and social connection.

The insertion and the existing stand in dialogue with each other. They speak the same language but express themselves differently. One is formal, one is informal, one is clean, one is rough, one is climatizes the other more porous. When walking through and in-between a play of transparency an opacity, of archaic and more delicate, of wide and narrow occurs, resulting in a variety of spatial sensation, referencing the art it hosts.