lehner gunther

Student housing for ETH Zürich

Project type: open competition
Commissioned by: ETH Zürich
Location: ETH Campus, Zürich, Switzerland
Date: 2008

The position of the new student housing buildings in this proposal for the University campus of the ETH in Zurich has been chosen to generate inviting and open squares and different scales of public spaces. Primarily there is a movement of openness in the form of a diagonal from the South to the North corner of the plot. In the South there is the prominent access to the campus: here the building is slightly elevated to provide access to the campus with a easily readable gesture: the building, as it were, lifts up its skirt.

The proposed ensemble is composed by three volumes with different characters. They share the same DNA (recognisable on the façades), but are very different in their internal composition. Two of them are high and solid objects that accentuate the border of the campus adequately without closing off its accessibility. The third volume presents itself more individualized, as if it is composed by individual houses, though being united by a common ground floor. The first are collective housing schemes, the later literally separate houses.

The six floors building with the rectangular plan in the East is organized around a large atrium space that admits campus activities to its interior. On the outer façade as well as on the inner atrium there are three box-like voids that penetrate the building: here are the communal spaces of the large, 18 unit short stay units situated.

The six floors building in the West has a square plan and houses also the kindergarten in its base. Access for inhabitants and the kindergarten is situated within the top-lit atrium space in the middle of the volume. The protected outside playgrounds of the kinder garden are situated in the South of the building.

Collaboration with UFO architects.