Moving through Zurich — whether on foot, by bicycle, tram, or car — rarely involves a direct or uninterrupted trajectory. The city’s geography demands constant negotiation: the presence of the lake, the Sihl and Limmat rivers, and the expansive yet slowly receding Gleisfeld. Added to this is the undulating topography of neighborhoods such as Höngg, Wipkingen, Unterstrass, Oberstrass, Fluntern, and Hottingen, along with the rising slopes that lead toward the Zurich-, Uetli-, and Adlisberg. Traversing from one point to another often demands deliberate decision-making: choosing the right bridge to cross, the optimal form of transport, or the most efficient detour. Over time, these small but repeated decisions form an internal choreography — a mental map that guides one’s movements through the city.
At the city’s choke points — where roads narrow, traffic converges, or railway lines must be crossed — buildings become prominent, whether or not one consciously notices them. These structures, often lining thresholds and transitions, gain significance through repetition. They become markers of movement and memory, shaping the city’s rhythm and experience without necessarily being intended as landmarks.
These buildings are not Zurich’s icons. They serve as the understated backdrop to daily life. Many were constructed in the 1990s, 2000s, and early 2010s, and are now reaching the end of their first lifecycle. Alarmingly, some are already in danger of being demolished or significantly altered. This is not troubling because of sentimental attachment, but because it underscores how short a building’s life can be in a city shaped by real estate speculation and financial returns. It raises broader questions: What deserves to be preserved, and why? Can buildings that once embodied technical innovation be meaningfully renovated? And if their materials or construction methods are now obsolete, should we attempt to replicate them faithfully, or reinterpret them using the tools and technologies of the present?
These questions are particularly relevant at a time when architectural values are undergoing significant shifts. Today, there is widespread concern for adaptive reuse, sustainability, and social responsibility — topics that were not central to the mainstream architectural discourse one, two, or three decades ago. At that time, a different set of values prevailed. Many architects working in Zurich were preoccupied with ideas best encapsulated by Swiss architect and historian Martin Steinmann in his 1997 essay Les dessous de Madonna: ou le fait de présenter des matériaux qui ne sont pas destinés à cela. Steinmann’s concept of “the ordinary” involved a design ethos that rejected symbolic representation or imagery, choosing instead to present materials in their raw and unadorned state.
This pursuit was particularly evident in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, where architectural practices explored both the aesthetic and technical properties of construction materials. Basel-based practice Herzog & de Meuron, for example, embraced the imperfection and physicality of materials, highlighting insulation, foils, and other elements typically concealed behind finished surfaces, regardless of whether the materials were inexpensive or costly. In contrast, the work of Gigon/Guyer from Zurich presented an opposing material sensibility. Their buildings celebrated the precision, elegance, and high-performance capabilities of materials in their most polished and exclusive forms, revealing a different interpretation of inherent beauty.
Yet beauty is never a neutral or universal concept; it is a socially constructed idea, deeply rooted in context. In Zurich, the dominant architectural image of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries was shaped by a preference for sleek, seamless, hyper-modern surfaces. These buildings proliferated across the city in ways that were subtle rather than spectacular. These structures often function as peripherally present in our unconscious perception of the city — buildings that contribute to the city’s visual landscape without demanding to be noticed.
Many of these buildings remain invisible to the broader public, not because they lack quality, but because their modesty allows them to blend in rather than stand out. Moreover, Zurich’s remarkable density of well-designed buildings — across a wide range of styles, functions, and scales — means that few structures rise above the general architectural baseline. Local practices of architects such as Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer (already noted), Isa Stürm and Urs Wolf, Bruno Krucker and Thomas von Ballmoos, or EM2N, among others, have made lasting yet subtle contributions to Zurich’s built environment. Their buildings, often located along the railway lines that slice Zurich’s west into north and south, have become familiar reference points. Passed by daily, they slip into the city’s subconscious, their presence more often felt than articulated. And yet they are known—intuitively recognized by architects and non-architects alike—embedded in the collective urban memory, particularly within the highly regulated and carefully maintained context of Switzerland’s railway infrastructure.
Gigon/Guyer’s Stellwerk Vorbahnhof (1990) is a compact, box-like structure clad in orange-brown pigmented concrete and orange mirrored glass; it draws chromatic inspiration from the rusted steel tracks surrounding it. Its silhouette — though, in reality, a rectangle — appears polygonal from the Duttweiler Bridge. The meticulous attention paid to such infrastructural architecture is a hallmark of Swiss railway design. One finds parallel gestures in Herzog & de Meuron’s two Stellwerk projects in Basel or in Max Vogt’s 1960s Zentralstellwerk, near Zurich main station. Just a kilometer closer to Zurich’s central station, von Ballmoos Krucker’s Baudienstzentrum Kohlendreieck (2010–12) extends this lineage of angular geometry. Raised on a plinth and cantilevering over intersecting tracks, its enameled glass and aluminum façade dramatizes the logic of rail logistics. Its visual language nods simultaneously to Vogt’s work and BBPR’s Torre Velasca in Milan — a reference point for many Zurich-based architects of the time.
Further along the line, Stürm and Wolf realized two adjacent projects around the year 2000. The SVA Building, a government office for the canton’s social insurance authority, occupies a sharply triangular site. Its glass-and-concrete façade exaggerates this irregularity through cantilevers and a zigzagging footprint. At night, it reveals an unexpected interior landscape: a vast, unpopulated lobby where floating desk-like elements — reminiscent of Maarten Van Severen’s seamless furniture — echo its restrained, monochromatic palette. Next to it, the Sugus-Häuser form a group of nine residential buildings, each painted in colors evoking the Swiss candy they are nicknamed after. Developed as affordable housing, these buildings range in tone from green to yellow-green to orange, and together form a cohesive neighborhood within the larger district. Loved by residents and neighbors, the Sugus-Häuser recently became the focus of controversy when renovation plans led to the termination of all rental contracts in three of the buildings. Public backlash caused delays and sparked broader debate around preservation, displacement, and questioning the obligations of redevelopment.
Across the railway tracks, EM2N’s substantial housing block, completed in 2013, anchors the underpass on Langstrasse. Though not architecturally provocative, the building displays a quiet confidence — it feels neither assertive nor recessive, occupying its urban context with clarity and poise. Its long façade facing the railway tracks is hardly visible from the pedestrian point of view, leaving its short, abstract façade as the main point of reference.
These buildings are interesting again today — not only because their aesthetic aligns with the revived interest in Y2K design and early 2000s visual culture — but also because many start to be at the end of their first life cycle after just two or three decades. This is concerning; it reflects broader systemic forces in the building economy, where capitalist cycles often prioritize demolition and redevelopment over adaptation and care. As full demolition becomes increasingly untenable — economically, environmentally, and ethically — we must find new ways to care for these buildings, which were conceived with precision and often built from now-obsolete, high-performance components. The discourse of preservation is evolving, with terms like Materialgerechtigkeit (material equity) and Prozessgerechtigkeit (process equity) prompting difficult but necessary questions. Should we attempt to reproduce high-tech façades using unavailable materials, or reinterpret their ambition using today’s cutting-edge techniques? Neither solution alone addresses the larger questions of resource consumption, carbon impact, and social responsibility. Blind replication is not only impractical — it risks becoming intellectually lazy. Yet the desire for continuity and quality remains. These tensions offer no easy resolution, but at least the conversation has begun.
One building does, however, stand apart: Gigon/Guyer’s Prime Tower, completed between 2008 and 2011 and located in Zurich West, marks a radical departure from the city’s interim hesitation toward vertical development. Rising to 126 meters, it became Switzerland’s tallest building until 2015, and still remains Zurich’s highest edifice. It was the first high-rise enabled by revised zoning regulations that allowed for greater height and density in formerly industrial areas. For decades, Zurich maintained a horizontal profile. Following a burst of development in the 1960s and ’70s, a 1984 citizens’ initiative imposed a de facto ban on high-rise construction. The Prime Tower thus became a physical manifestation of a new but misleading urban logic: densification through height, framed as the only solution to limited land and rising housing demand.
Reactions to the Prime Tower remain mixed — many either admire or reject it. While built during an office space boom, it continues to command high rents and low vacancy, even as demand for commercial real estate declines in the post-pandemic era. As Carol Willis notes in Form Follows Finance (1995), skyscrapers, when located centrally, often follow economic imperatives more than architectural ones. Their flexibility, visibility, and association with prestige make them resilient market objects, unlike corporate headquarters located at the urban fringes that quickly become obsolete. The Prime Tower was never intended to be symbolic, but its height, color, and persistent visibility have rendered it a metronome of Zurich’s urban rhythm. Its persistent presence in the city recalls the Empire State Building in Joel Meyerowitz’s photos of New York City — not always the subject, but always there, anchoring daily life. When Meyerowitz photographed the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, he used a similar approach, letting it drift in and out of view, integrated into the city’s rhythms. The Prime Tower has become a landmark in Zurich: visible from trains, highways, hillsides, or glimpsed between rooflines, it has embedded itself in the collective perception.
However, its construction also marked a period when architecture and planning largely ignored social and ecological responsibilities. The masterplans for Zurich West and Oerlikon prioritized the demolition of large-scale industrial sites, replacing them with new housing, office towers, and commercial space. While such strategies delivered some density and investment, they also erased urban histories and contributed to environmental degradation. A younger generation of architects now questions the demolition-replacement model and its role in perpetuating crises — economic, social, and ecological. Zurich, fortunately, has developed more moderately than many global cities. And despite its transformation, it remains largely livable, accessible, and humane.
Today, architectural discourse has shifted. In both academia and practice, there is a growing commitment to building within existing structures, embracing adaptive reuse, exploring regenerative materials, and acknowledging the societal responsibilities of the profession. These concerns, once peripheral, are now central. And they compel us to reconsider not only how we build, but how we care — for the buildings we inherit, the cities we shape, and the futures we imagine.
