Terrace settlement Mühlehalde
The terrace settlement Mühlehalde in Umiken , canton Aargau was built in three construction phases from 1963 to 1971 and was considered an innovative project of new forms of living that received much attention from experts and the public.
Building description
Located on a south-facing Jura slope with a view of the nearby Aare , it benefited from its privileged location. At the same time, it was intended as a response to both the high-rise residential buildings in large estates, which were perceived as a problem, and to the looming urban sprawl . In a comment, the architecture journalist and later chairman of the Werkbund, Lucius Burckhardt, praised it as a departure from the “ facade house of the past ”. Due to their nesting, as three-dimensional structures, they can only be experienced in motion. Finally completed with more than 30 single-family houses and studios, the residential complex was considered to be trend-setting against the encasing of the landscape . State-of-the-art building technology was used for this purpose: an inclined lift accesses the horizontal access routes to four stations from the street where the garages and parking spaces are located. The apartments can be reached from there, like individual terraced houses.
Planning process and requirement
In this building arrangement a way out of the housing problem was seen. The modernity was on the agenda, both that of the complex and the innovations of the planning and construction process: The residential complex was propagated as the “ utopian regional model Brugg 2000 ” in an exhibition as early as 1958 by the architects Scherer, Strickler + Weber, Zurich, who specifically called themselves team 2000 for this purpose . During the realization, a working group was formed with the Metron architectural group , which was founded as a cooperative in 1965.
Critical appraisal
Similar efforts had been made a few years earlier in the Halen housing estate of Atelier 5 , which directly occupied the discussion. The social character of both building and living was already seen there. As with the Mühlehalde, value was placed on space and resource-saving construction and thus anticipated a discussion that would not take up much space until a decade and a half later.
The multitude of such hillside residential complexes realized today lets the Mühlehalde appear in a more sober light:
“Today, however, when corporeality and conciseness of form are once again highly valued, this fact contributes to the fact that terrace houses are usually only held in low esteem by architects. We often perceive the amorphous nature of this type of building as a problem - just think of some low-cost tax communities on Lake Zurich, where such buildings as the metastases of a malignant cancerous tumor proliferate on the slopes. "
literature
- Florian Adler, Hans Girsberger, Olinde Riege (eds.): Architecture Guide Switzerland . Les Editions d'Architecture Artemis , Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-7608-8004-5 (adult new edition).
- Martin Tschanz: hillside settlements . In: werk, build + Wohnen . Werk AG, Zurich September 2003.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Martin Tschanz: Slope settlements . In: werk, build + Wohnen . Werk AG, Zurich September 2003.
Coordinates: 47 ° 29 '7.4 " N , 8 ° 11' 49.8" E ; CH1903: 657 170 / two hundred fifty-nine thousand six hundred seventy-seven