Zürcher Zentralwäscherei «back to the future» —

Zentralwäscherei, Zürich, 1978. (ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf: Bramaz, Hans Ruedi)

Why reuse?

If something already stands where we are planning something new, we can replace the old with the new - or preserve the existing in order to relate the coming to it. That we should strive for the latter is an imperative of the times - after all, we can no longer afford architecture that is not sustainable. That is why reuse tasks should be adequately represented in architectural studies. However, dealing with the existing building stock is not only worthwhile for reasons of sustainability. It shows us ways to expand architecture as the ‚art of spatial interrelationship‘ (Fritz Neumeyer) by one dimension: the ‚art of temporal interrelationship‘. By integrating what is already there and building on it, our work is not obscured but enriched, in the sense of Robert Venturi: „It is the difficult unity through inclusion rather than the easy unity through exclusion.“

The test object: „Zürcher Zentralwäscherei“

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