Extracting Value – Structural Change in Zurich and EM2N's Toni Site Project
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the powerful Oerlikon Bührle company, a machine and The Toni project is integrated in a conversion process not weapons producer that had marketed its own brownfield Extracting Value – Structural change just in physical terms but also as regards the economy, sites by launching a new urban neighbourhood in the in Zurich and EM2N’s Toni Site project education and city marketing. In the 1980s the places north of Zurich. where machines, foodstuffs and textiles were produced still resembled a multitude of ‘forbidden cities’ in the There, like in the western edge of Zurich, the shift toward Text by André Bideau north and west of central Zurich. But, measured in terms a service economy led to political unrest and disputes Published in EM2N – Both and, 2009 of the number of workplaces it offered, industrial produc- about zoning and the building code. The area between tion in Zurich had already passed its zenith by 1971; and the Hardbrücke and the start of the freeway to Bern is Among the effects of postmodernism and economic so, within a few years, the Toni dairy, which started opera- particularly characteristic of a transformation process that structural change is a change of the meanings embed- tions in 1977 and was once Europe’s most modern milk affected not only urban space but also its protagonists ded in urban space. Due to the increasing instability of the factory, was surrounded by service sector buildings. For and institutions from the mid-1980s on. In Zurich one ele- relationship between capital and cities the architectural its part the monolithic, self-contained Toni dairy has only ment of structural change was that the tools required for representation of the urban and public space seems to be a vaguely industrial character and lacks external spaces of the redevelopment of sites were only developed after the available only in the form of artifice. Investors, town plan- the quality to be found on other factory sites. The building industrial shells had been placed on the market and no ners and their political superiors tend to use terms such as and the site are almost congruent. It is primarily its dimen- takers could be found for a number of sites that had been identity or urbanity in inflatory ways. Particularly during sions that give this complex its urban significance. The replanned using the earlier methods. In the favourable the process of de-industrialisation, which in Zurich pro- stack of unusually deep production floors has a footprint economic climate of the late 1990s a new response to this vides the framework for postmodern urban development, that is greater than the ground floor area of the Centre situation was the rebranding of the city edge, which had architects are expected to provide the images, scenarios Pompidou. But, in contrast to the Parisian ‘culture refin- been characterised by innumerable disused or underuti- and scripts that would allow the materialisation of places ery’ completed in the same year, the yoghurt factory could lised industrial sites (like the Toni dairy), as the develop- that allow both economic promise and sustainability. The just as easily be a distribution centre, a refuse incineration ment zone ‘Zurich West’. In place of lengthy processes mutation of a yoghurt factory into a university of the arts plant or an atomic power station from the later phase of Fig. 2: Toni Factory, Zurich, 2006, interior before start of involving unwieldy zoning, cooperative development is particularly symptomatic of expectations of this kind. the Soviet Union. It documents a thematic impoverish- conversion work planning soon emerged with a municipal administration Like with the used truck tarpaulins that, in the same part ment of an industrial architecture that had reached the interested in arriving at consensus and real estate own- of the city, are transformed into accessories in the form level of generic boxes. Its original function survived for In a complex that, like the Toni factory, is only thirty ers willing to engage in discussion. For the advocates, of Freitag bags, the central aspect of the Toni Site project a mere 22 years. Then, in quick succession, followed the years old the focal point of design strategies cannot be this was the long overdue liberation from fundamentalist is to instill added value in an amorphous functional con- amalgamation of the brand Toni with other regional Swiss a contrast between authenticity and presentation. With debates with no more contact to reality; for the more tra- tainer. milk processing firms and the bankruptcy of Swiss Dairy the Escher-Wyss site in the same area of the city, where ditional left, in contrast, it represented a betrayal of public Food, the company that resulted from this fusion. After the Zurich Schauspielhaus opened a theatre branch, this interests and a step towards governance catering to the the dramatic disintegration the Toni Site came into the strategy was still possible. A former ship-building shed realestate market behind closed doors (in Zurich a coali- ownership of the Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) in 2005. was reinvented by Ortner & Ortner to accommodate tion between the main parties, with a social democratic Having initially considered clearing the empty factory high culture exported from the city centre. But, unlike a majority, has been in power since 1990). for office use, the new owner, together with the canton 19th century machine factory, the Toni factory lacks any and city of Zurich, developed scenarios for recycling this kind of industrial patina that could be instrumentalised. Like the machine and foodstuff industries the Swiss edu- piece of real estate for educational purposes. A number Here the pressing question is what kind of programmes, cational system has recently undergone a phase of reposi- of Zurich architecture firms were commissioned to pro- spaces and atmospheres can be introduced into a generic tioning and consolidation that has had implications for the duce studies on this goal. Two years later the masterplan functional architecture. For EM2N the transformation of urban realm as well. The founding of the Zurich University for the Toni Site, based on EM2N’s proposals, was ap- this very deep structure into a university offers the op- of Arts (ZHdK) and the Zurich University of Applied Sci- proved by the political authorities and a rental contract portunity to ‘bring the city into the building’, to interpret ences (ZHAW) was the outcome of the reform of higher was signed transfering the site to the canton for twenty an ‘inner urbanism’ literally in the form of lots, streets education, as well as an attempt to integrate Switzerland Fig. 1: Toni Factory, Zurich, 1977, sectional diagram of years for educational use. Before construction started and addresses. Mathias Müller and Daniel Niggli do not in the Bologna reform that is being implemented through- functions at the end of 2008 ZKB sold the real estate along with see this as an inducement to romanticise either the Euro- out Europe. These institutions combine performing and the final construction project – not to the canton, but to a pean city or the iconography of the urban public realm, visual arts as well as schools for applied psychology and company that itself exemplifies the process of structural but rather to examine the discourse of the investors from social work at the location Zurich. The entire ZHdK and change: Allreal, a developer and general contractor that a conceptual standpoint. Consequently they redefine the two departments of ZHAW – functions currently distribut- grew out of the real estate and contracting operations of Zurich University of the Arts and the Zurich University of ed in 44 different locations – are to be housed on the Toni Applied Sciences, combined under a single roof, as an Site. The ensuing ‘cultural hybrid’ (the term used in the ‘education mall’. In the process they identify themselves official project documentation) lends a presence to that with a hybrid kind of public realm that is characteristic of branch of the economy that is increasingly outstripping the periphery (not far from Toni until recently Marcel Meili material production and meets the needs of postmodern and Markus Peter were designing a soccer stadium above societies. The fact that the public sector is undertaking a a shopping centre for Credit Suisse). major initiative in positioning Zurich by reprogramming 1 the Toni Site into the third-largest educational facility af- iconography aims in the opposite direction. Müller and along with others, was a provocation for formal codes of ter the ETH and the University of Zurich, but functions Niggli employ the term ‘contamination’ to emphasise their good manners as agreed upon between Zurich and Ba- merely as tenant and beneficiary of the complex, clearly appropriation of an industrial typology. And accordingly sel. The interest that Müller and Niggli show in ugliness demonstrates the specific balance of power. Although their circulation system does not pay hommage to the in general and in tinkering distinguishes them from the camouflaged in uncharismatic garb the newly created didactics of the ‘promenade architecturale’, but, in both grandchildren of Critical Regionalism, a generation for educational conglomerate has the task of promoting the haptic and atmospherical terms, condenses episodes into which subtly alienated references have functioned both urbanisation of a former industrial area, not unlike like the a sequence in which specific opportunities for identifica- as symbolic capital and a defence against postmodern waterfront HafenCity University in Hamburg, which is also tion and generic spaces follow each other. arbitrariness. Although the interests of EM2N also include made up of existing schools. a genuinely Swiss passion for the materiality of place, they understand how to address the problem of its iden- As a design metaphor the education mall does not so tity against the background of incalculable market forces much express Christoph Alexander’s ‘university as a mar- and unstable scenarios of usage.