On Binzmühlestrasse, the change in scale between post-industrial city and suburban scattered housing scheme is more vivid than elsewhere. What should the future settlement be orientated towards? We like the permeable edges of the street in the suburb: The greenery of tall trees, shrubs and hedges spills out between the modest buildings. The new housing estate joins in here. This is why the five houses along the street are deliberately restrained in form, shape and rhythm, and low in silhouette. There is plenty of greenery and blossom between them, as there are no underpinnings, but plenty of space and unsealed surfaces.
The valuable trees define the «genius loci», the spirit of the place. All of them are to remain standing when new buildings are constructed here – only one «tree of the future» has to go. In this way, the open spaces shape the buildings, not the other way round. These open spaces are strongly characterised and clearly differentiated from one another. Every child can name them: Alley, square, courtyard. This creates attractive addresses. The square forms the threshold between the city and the neighbourhood. The alley is densely lined with buildings. It is open to everyone who is out and about in the neighbourhood on foot or by bike. The courtyard is wide, lushly overgrown and lined with gardens and airy balconies.
East-west orientated flats can be significantly deeper than north-south orientated flats that only receive sun at midday – because the sun passes by them twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. The existing GISA housing scheme is also east-west orientated. When it was built on a greenfield site, it was obvious that the orientation of the buildings was determined by the sunlight. In order to preserve as many of the existing trees as possible in the future, it makes sense to orientate the new buildings in the same way as the old ones. The structural densification of Zurich's garden city neighbourhoods is almost always accompanied by a loss of generosity for the open spaces. In contrast, the new GISA housing scheme, by concentrating the building masses and bundling the green spaces, achieves a spaciousness that can be compared with the residential block edges of the 1920s and 1930s.
