Leonard Neutzler, Lucy Ritschl & Michèle Zeder

Embedded in between two major Zürich forests lays the ETH campus Hönggerberg. Large, anonymous and intimidating facades almost seam to be cramped to its rigid borders. Am I even allowed to pass through it?

Many residents of the surrounding neighborhoods and motivated strollers from afar roam the peripheral fields of the ETH Hönggerberg in their leisure time and get to experience the face of the campus as an outsider.

The student housing situated at the south west corner of the campus takes up almost half of its south facing border. Despite its strong presence to the face of the campus its architecture and usage both seam like outsiders.

Rather than looking from the inside out, we started analyzing the bigger scale. Being situated within this green bed, we started rethinking the relationship between in- and outside the campus and detected a strong potential to introduce a parkway concept connecting the forests and surrounding neighborhoods. Taking it a step further we portrayed this parkway idea to a green belt that winds itself through a big part of the city, connecting multiple campuses and forests and acting as a green leisure threshold between the Limmat- and Glatttal. Zooming in on the smaller scale, we believe that the whole border itself could be redefined as a parkway, naturally preventing the built matter from spreading over it.

This park landscape gives the buildings new importance, now what can be done to make their expression more welcoming? To break up the wall and add another dimension to the facades we add a connecting balcony structure which brings life out to the edge of the campus allowing people to be visible, breaking through the institutional cleanliness that shaped the campus’ character.