Loïc Rey

Due to the rising housing costs in Zürich, artists are often pushed to the outskirts, forced to live and work far from the city center to find affordable studio space. Meanwhile, the art they produce is presented in detached, commercial galleries downtown, creating a disconnect between the place of making and the place of display. Cities were once the epicenters of both art production and exhibition, and there is value in reestablishing this link.

Located on the slope in Unterstrass, Kreis 6, the houses stand on Clausiusstrasse, a quiet dead-end street, crossed only by pedestrians walking up and down the hill.
Densification is achieved through the coexistence of three functions: living, producing, and exhibiting. Artists and their families reside on the upper floors in private bedrooms, with shared kitchens and communal living areas, while the ground floors accommodate the more public functions. A new address is introduced on Clausiusstrasse, where exhibition spaces activate the ground floor, creating a porous interface between the city and the artistic process. The stairs between Clausiusstrasse 47 and 49 now connect the two houses with a generous, oblique exhibition space, maintaining the link to Zehnderweg and providing access to the ateliers in the extension below.

These new studios offer a variety of spatial and lighting conditions, shaped by both the constraints of the existing structure and the possibilities introduced by the new addition.
The city of Zürich will buy these two houses from ETH to offert them to the artists, instead of selling it to the highest bidder.

This project proposes a new urban typology, bringing the artistic process back into the heart of the city.