Channeling my Inner Corb
An Architectural Tour of Zurich
A large portion of this trip in Europe was planned arond seeing and experiencing architecture. As much time as we spend staring at drawings and images on screens it’s no substitute for the real experience of walking the building, touching the walls, and observing the light.
In Zurich I set up my own personal walking tour to visit some of the modern architectural projects that interested me the most. The first stop was Sihlcity that was close to hostel I stayed at. This mall is notable as a redevelopment of an industrial plot that used to be a paper mill into a mall and public space. It reminds me of the Distillery District in Toronto, but better done. First because there is an indoor mall, but second because there’s also a movie theater, fitness center, and several restaurants. The Distillery District is a little too far out of the way and feels a little too much like a tourist destination because the shops whereas this feels like it’s meant for the residence.
I began the next day at the Tamedia AG building by Shigeru Ban. This heavy time building is significant because it is one of the first high profile mass timber buildings. It’s iconic dowel-esque joints are unique. The building is the main office for a newspaper but it was the weekend so the building was closed and I could only see it from the exterior.
On the way to my next destination I stumbled through the Zurich University for public education. It’s nice to be able to wander through education institutions again, something that was a fond part of my childhood.
The next stop was the Museum of Design. It is situated in Zurich’s former School of Arts and Crafts designed by Adolf Steger and Karl Egender. It is a pretty typical modern architecture building from the mid century that priorities regular order and functionality. In the basement was an exhibit of interesting industrial design, objects like ceramics, graphics and furniture. Upstairs was a hallway of posters made my woman. The museum was interesting because below the visible display were cabinets with drawers that revealed more objects. They weren’t very orderly so every next drawer would be something entirely different from the last.
On the recommendation of a friend I visited the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum. The Swiss national museum was built in 1891 and is pretty typical of that neo-classical architectural age. It’s somewhat surprising that the buildng was orginally built as a museum because it feels like a castle inside with rooms flowing into adjacent rooms. An international competition in 2000 was won by the Basel-based architects Chris & Gantenbein that added a monolithic block to the backside of the building, connecting either ends of a “U” shaped building.
I’m happy that at all of the museums I was able to get the student discount. I’m not sure if it’s because I showed my UofT card instead of the international Student Identity Card (ISIC) which I’ve had less success with because it has my birthdate on it and most places in Europe requesting the ISIC only allow for under 25.
The museum itself was quite interesting. It was all that informative but it had a little bit of everything. In addition to historic rooms filled with old stuff, I particularly enjoyed a display on rings, a temporary exhibit in deforestation, and the news photograph prize gallery. Mainly I came to see the addition. Supposedly, the addition’s expressive form “‘can be understood as a contemporary interpretation of Gull’s articulated historicism’ — in that it acknowledges the past while looking toward the future — and insist on drawing parallels between the old and new, in the smoothed cement floors that ‘reinterpret the old building’s terrazzo floors’, the textured concrete facades that echo the tuff stone of the original building, and the 80cm thick walls that continue the tectonic solidity of the main museum.” (ref 1)
The addition must be compared to the ROM crystal designed by Daniel Libeskind. Both are by high profile architects and abstract geometric forms attaching to historic neoclassical buildings. Both prioritize exterior drama in lieu of interior floor area with bridges and expansive floor to floor openings. Where the ROM is a steel structure clad in a mixture of panels and glass, this addition is entirely concrete with strategically placed circular openings. I quite liked the portholes but they also indicated that the walls were about a meter thick concrete on the exterior. I’m not sure if they’re double wythe with insulation or just mass but that’s a hell of a lot of concrete — even if they have a smooth texture.
The main event of the day and city was the Corbusier Pavilion. Complete in 1967 two years after Le Corbusier died, it is his final project and notable for a few reasons. First, it is constructed from steel and feels more like a Mies Van Der Rohe project because of the cross columns made from four L angles and the extensive glass to look out on the park. This is Le Corbusier’s only steel building. All of his previous work is dominated by concrete. Second, it was commissioned by a woman called Heidi Weber, a Swiss art collector and patron, who specifically requested a building to house and display Corbusier’s work. So in essence the architect designed a museum for himself. Most museums are repurposed buildings or pavilions, not specifically made by hte architect for the architect. Lastly, it was designed with Corbusier’s scale of man in mind.
I was waining when I arrived so I ate a salad for lunch outside on the lawn before going in. The building itself was remarkable. It was restored and only reopened in 2019. I enjoyed the changes in volume of the rooms and the lightness of the structure. The stairs float and the rotating wall panels, skylights in the basement, and ships doors provide many surprisingly delights and opportunities for active engagement. It reminded me of the important bits I read in The Experience of Architecture by Henry Pulmmer.
I spent time in their small library browsing through the book collection and was delighted at the end to purchase a small souvenir booklet that was well written to describe the history of the building, it’s architect, and include drawings. If I were to study this building later, which I hope to do, I think I could learn a lot from it — both of what works well and what I would do differently.
The river promenade was busy because it was the weekend. A short distance away near the Zurich opera house is Stadelhofen train station designed by Santiago Calatrava. The station has two lines at the bottom of a retaining wall with an underground arcade. It is immediately recognizable as a Calatrava project due to the sweeping arcs of the structural members. In true Calatrava fashion, the concrete structural members are fluid and oversized for magnifying effect while the steel is slender and graceful like a dancer.
Switzerland and Germany have many examples of beautiful infrastructure crafted by an architect that Canada and America is just beginning to understand. I hope that later in my career I can leverage my experience in civil engineering to return to infrastructure projects that don’t just cover an ugly box in a building envelope but become beautiful assets that are valued by the public.
Along my architecture tour I also passed by the Kunsthaus art museum that has an extension designed by David Chipperfield in 2020 taking up a square city block. The design is a massive rectangular sandstone-covered building. It is quite massive and I wasn’t sure how I felt. On one hand it felt unwelcoming and monumental but on the other, the texture and stone louvers were well detailed.
I didn’t go into it because the admission was too much, nor the nearby Zurich University Library because it was closed on the weekend. Instead I made my way back towards the old town and walked through the streets there. I didn’t see anything noteworthy, perhaps because I’ve been walking so many old districts lately but I did end up back at the Opera House to see the Ballet.
On some occasions a screen is erected in the plaza that has a live viewing of the ballet free to the public. I watched the first half, an hour and a half. It was my first ballet and while interesting, I can confirm that I’m more interested in modern dance. The ballet was cool to see story expressed in dance but it took more interpretation than musicals and seemed like a rush to do as many spins and toe flicks in the least time.
On the walk back to the hostel I passed an interesting parkade covered in curved glass panels that had some illuminated panels. I was however pretty tired and fully satisfied with my architectural tour that I didn’t feel the need to check this out in detail.
