Aussersihl Viaduct
The Aussersihl Viaduct is the name of two railway bridges in the industrial quarter in Zurich , which were opened on August 18, 1894. The Aussersihl Viaduct leads from Depot F across the track field towards Wipkingen station . It consists of the higher Wipkinger viaduct , the direction of the train station Wipkingen leads and the lower and now-defunct Lettenviadukt which the former railway station Letten leads. The Wipkinger Viaduct is still used as a train connection from Zurich main station through the Wipkinger Tunnel to Oerlikon . The Letten Viaduct is now used as a pedestrian and bicycle path and is a further connection between districts 5 and 6. The path leads from Josefswiese over the Letten Bridge to Letten train station and via the Oberer Letten bathing facility along the Limmat to the Dynamo youth culture center .
The name is derived from the former community of Aussersihl, which extended over today's districts 4 and 5 . In 1893, one year before the viaduct was completed, Aussersihl was incorporated into the city of Zurich together with ten other communities and together with Wiedikon formed what was then District III. When the division of the city districts was revised in 1913 and District III was split up, the greater part of the Aussersihl Viaduct is no longer in an area that is also called Aussersihl, but in the industrial quarter.
The Wipkinger viaduct was the longest motorway bridge in the construction of 834-meter length of Switzerland. The Letten Viaduct is a little shorter at 823 meters.
history
The Aussersihl Viaduct was planned by the Swiss Northeast Railway (NOB) from 1875 and completed within three and a half years from 1891 to 1894. The work was under the direction of NOB chief engineer Robert Moser . The viaduct was an artificial extension of the Zurich – Oerlikon – Winterthur line to provide the post- tensioning and pushing service on the steep section over the 600-meter-long earth dam in place of today's Röntgenstrasse from the Langstrasse barrier to the Sihlquai (on the Limmat ). It is built from hewn natural stone and has 63 main openings, the largest of which is 22.72 m wide. Most of them are brick arches. The Letten Viaduct has two fewer openings, but a slightly larger span of 24.46 m. Truss bridges are built in at road openings. The arched truss bridges over the tracks of the Zurich Vorbahnhof were replaced by prestressed concrete bridges between 2000 and 2002 after more than a hundred years. The Aussersihl Viaduct ends at a short section of the old embankment from 1855. The route then leads over the 103-meter-long Limmat Bridge (officially called Sihlquai Limmat ), the last part of which over the Wasserwerkstrasse dates back to 1855.
On December 2, 1940, the viaduct was bombed. The viaduct, overhead line and feed line were damaged. Three railway officials were seriously injured and two others were slightly injured. Until 1941, the Aussersihl Viaduct was part of the longest connected bridge structure in Switzerland, when it was exceeded in length by the Lorraine Viaduct. Between 1940 and 1960 and 2005 the viaduct was extensively renovated. From the end of 2011, extensive renovation work was carried out on the Letten Bridge, which is why the bridge was closed to pedestrian and bicycle traffic until April 2013.
In the late 1980s, the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) wanted to expand the Aussersihl Viaduct under the project name Fil Rouge (French for “red thread”) by one or two tracks eastwards in order to increase the capacity of the Zurich HB – Oerlikon line. For this purpose, a new four-lane route would have been built over both viaducts, thus increasing the capacity to Wipkingen station. The subsequent Wipkingertunnel would have remained double-tracked. However, this variant led to resistance from the residents, as the trains would have passed three meters in front of the windows and the houses would have been almost covered by the higher platform. Likewise, the already planned pedestrian path on the Letten Viaduct would have been endangered by the pillars of the platform. Sections from the district parties joined in to oppose the population and thus formed the non-partisan committee “Crazy the Viaduct”. The committee's request was not to prevent construction, but to move the platform a few meters to the west because it was uninhabited. The committee also joined in collecting the signatures of the cantonal popular initiative for a through station with a subsequent new Weinberg tunnel . The popular initiative was accepted and so the expansion of the capacity of the Aussersihl viaduct became obsolete.
Wipkinger Viaduct (autumn 2008)
Detailed view of the arches before the expansion. (Autumn 2008)
Shops in the arches. (Spring 2010)
Aussersihler Viaduct at night (September 2010)
use
The Letten Viaduct has been partially available for pedestrian and bicycle traffic since 1998, and in 2003 the extension to Josefstrasse was provisionally opened. In 2008, the civil engineering department of the City of Zurich (TAZ) began laying the final road surface using a three-meter-wide concrete slab. The renewed footpath and cycle path was opened to the public in autumn 2009.
The viaduct arches under the footpath and bike path have been used as warehouses and partly for shops and restaurants since the early 19th century. But at the end of March 2003 they had to leave their premises because the viaduct was in need of renovation after over 100 years of operation, for which the fixtures had to be removed.
In the early summer of 2004, the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and the City of Zurich found the solution for the new use of the viaduct in an architectural competition. The winning project of the EM2N Architects AG and Zulauf Seippel Schweingruber Landschaftsarchitekten (today: Schweingruber Zulauf Landschaftsarchitekten) project was based on the simple sheds that existed before the renovation. Because the implementation of such projects is not one of the core tasks of SBB, they entrusted the execution to the PWG foundation , which wanted to accommodate different, district-related uses in the arches.
The PWG foundation created a new concept under the label IM VIADUKT in order to make the 53 arches usable again as shops, studios as well as for restaurants and social institutions. The first shops opened on April 1, 2010. The first market hall in Zurich was built on Limmatstrasse where the Wipkinger Viaduct and the Letten Viaduct separate. It was opened to the public on September 4, 2010 along with the other installations. The complex construction work on the listed building took almost two years.
From the bathing establishment Unterer Letten , people repeatedly climb the Lettenbrücke in order to jump from there into the underwater channel of the Lettenkraftwerk.
Market hall between Lettenviadukt (left) and Wipkinger Viadukt (right)
Market hall from the inside. The Letten Viaduct can be seen on the left.
Awards
IM VIADUKT received recognition from the Swiss Association of Engineers and Architects (SIA) for the sustainable design of the living space “Umsicht 2011”. The laudation says that the project impresses “with its design quality” and “gives impetus for the ongoing social upheaval in the neighborhood. The implemented multifunctional adaptation of the viaduct as an element connecting parts of the city is a future-oriented, valuable contribution to urban development ». IM VIADUKT received an award for good buildings from the city of Zurich (2006–2010) and also received the first ever audience award. The City of Zurich awards this award to "clients and architects whose buildings stand out due to their high architectural quality, precise urban planning interventions and sustainable construction." In addition, the foot and cycle path of the Letten Viaduct received the golden rabbit in 2011 in the "Landscape" category.
literature
- Schönbächler Robert: New Year's Gazette Industriequartier; Wipkingerviadukt SBB (Aussersihler Viaduct). Zurich 2011 Publisher CVP5
- Etienne Ruedin, Marcel Schönbächler: The railway viaduct from Aussersihl over the industrial quarter to Wipkingen . CVP Zurich 5, Zurich 2002 (New Year's Gazette Industriequartier).
- Robert Schönbächler: District 5: Bridges, viaducts, underpasses and public transport . CVP Zurich 5, Zurich 2004 (New Year's Gazette Industriequartier)
- Irmfried Siedentop: Switzerland as a bridge country . Orell Füssli, Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-280-00981-2 .
- Hans G. Wägli, Sébastien Jacobi, Roland Pobst: Swiss Rail Network . SBB, Bern 1990.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Length information from the Swiss rail network, 1980 edition
- ↑ Simon Eppenberger, When bombs fell on the Wipkinger Viaduct , in: Tages-Anzeiger, August 13, 2009
- ↑ Lettenbrücken urgently need to be renovated , press release civil engineering and disposal office, October 25, 2011
- ↑ Newsletter «Stadtverkehr 2025 Zürich macht vorwärts» ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , City of Zurich, April 2013
- ↑ Civil engineering office of the city of Zurich: media release, July 24, 2009, http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/departement/medien/medienmitteilungen/2009/juli/090724b.html
- ^ Building construction department of the City of Zurich: New use of the SBB viaduct arches, June 2004, study commission in a selective procedure, report of the jury.
- ↑ von Büren, Charles: "The viaduct as a link", in: Umsicht, Regards, Sguardi. The SIA award for the sustainable design of living space, supplement to TEC21, No. 10 (March 4, 2010), p. 58.
- ↑ http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/gute-bauten#die_ausgezeichenbauten2006-2010 (accessed January 10, 2012)
- ↑ Hochparterre: Goldene Hasen - These are "The Best of 2011" ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 47 ° 23 '10.3 " N , 8 ° 31' 21.3" E ; CH1903: six hundred eighty-one thousand eight hundred and forty-six / 248940