New Housing in Zurich

Swiss architecture is commonly conotated with the names of celebrated architects such as Marion Botta, Peter Zumthor, or Herzog & de Meuron, and with their iconic buildings. Yet there is much more to the topic than, for example, beautiful private houses or spectacular public projects such as museums. This new book looks at the Swiss variety of co-operative housing developments with a special focus on the city of Zurich.

Over the past two decades, such developments have changed significantly. Support by public funding and open competitions have helped to design and realise a vast number of highly innovative co-operative projects in Zurich over that period. Many of them can serve as well as models for how to meet the constantly increasing demand for urban housing.

New Housing in Zurich is the first comprehensive survey of contemporary co-operative estates in Switzerland’s largest city. It features some 50 projects by type, lavishly illustrated with images and plans, thus also providing a typology of multi-unit residential architecture. Essays on the history of co-operative housing in Switzerland, the interplay between co-operatives and the city and their impact on urban development on the larger scale, on new urban and architectural concepts, on co-operatives in the post-industrial age, and on their social dynamics round out the volume.