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Apartment Building Schmiede Wiedikon
Birmensdorferstrasse 155, Zürich
1957 - 1958
On
a triangular site between Birmensdorfer- and Kehlhofstrasse in
Zurich-Wiedikon the architect Werner Stücheli realized an eleven-story
building.
The building consists mainly of two parts. An elongated horizontal shopping passage on the ground floor runs along the road and ends in a pavilion-like front building.
The high-rise building, containing 55 duplex apartments, is set above and across the aformentioned ground floor. With its oblique end faces, the trapezoidal
floor plan of the tower traces the course of the two streets. The height of the building marks the road junction and allows the building to act as focal point of the quarter.
The high building volume interrupts the long, closed street fronts with their uniform eaves heights. On the inside the shape of the plan results in a fan-like
arrangement of the apartments. On the lower floor of the duplex apartment there are located the kitchen and a living room, while the two bedrooms are on the upper floor.
The continuous balconies are recessed in the side façades, on the northwest side they serve alternately as access galleries to the flats respectively as balconies of
the upper duplex floors. In contrast to this, the south-east façade presents itself as a rhythm of a sawtooth corresponding to the individual residential units.
The same sawtooth arrangement can be found in the shops on the ground floor. The beveled storefronts result in a square-like widening of the sidewalk near the tram stop.
In his high-rise buildings, Werner Stücheli liked to work carefully on the rooftop terraces, so did he also in the high-rise at the Schmiede Wiedikon. Above the rooftop
terrace floats a canopy shaped as a trapezoidal plate inverted to the one of the building plan. As a consequence of this superimposition the longer side of
the canopy juts over the lateral elevations of the skyscraper.
The building consists mainly of two parts. An elongated horizontal shopping passage on the ground floor runs along the road and ends in a pavilion-like front building.
The high-rise building, containing 55 duplex apartments, is set above and across the aformentioned ground floor. With its oblique end faces, the trapezoidal
floor plan of the tower traces the course of the two streets. The height of the building marks the road junction and allows the building to act as focal point of the quarter.
The high building volume interrupts the long, closed street fronts with their uniform eaves heights. On the inside the shape of the plan results in a fan-like
arrangement of the apartments. On the lower floor of the duplex apartment there are located the kitchen and a living room, while the two bedrooms are on the upper floor.
The continuous balconies are recessed in the side façades, on the northwest side they serve alternately as access galleries to the flats respectively as balconies of
the upper duplex floors. In contrast to this, the south-east façade presents itself as a rhythm of a sawtooth corresponding to the individual residential units.
The same sawtooth arrangement can be found in the shops on the ground floor. The beveled storefronts result in a square-like widening of the sidewalk near the tram stop.
In his high-rise buildings, Werner Stücheli liked to work carefully on the rooftop terraces, so did he also in the high-rise at the Schmiede Wiedikon. Above the rooftop
terrace floats a canopy shaped as a trapezoidal plate inverted to the one of the building plan. As a consequence of this superimposition the longer side of
the canopy juts over the lateral elevations of the skyscraper.