Daniel Weiss, “Wo alte menschen wohnen,” Hochparterre Wettbewerbe 53, no. 2 (2025): 94.
Linked to its emergence as an industrial center, Zurich’s institutionalized care for the elderly had long been associated with hospital-like settings. Its first modern infrastructure in that regard was the Pfrundshaus (almshouse) St. Leonard, designed in 1840–42 by Leonhard Zeugheer, the architect of the cantonal hospital. Built on a prominent urban site and to the latest standards of care, the Pfrundhaus was nevertheless a strict institution for mainly poor people, for example retired servants. These were obliged upon entry to donate their possessions, take on household duties, and were subject to strict house rules including a curfew until 1929. Only from the mid-1960s could residents own their own key and be free to come and go without permission. On the next plot to the Pfrundhaus was later built the Bürgerasyl, meant for better-off citizens, who could afford paying rent, and were free to come and go as they pleased. See Janis Sigg, “Bürgerasyl-Pfrundhaus – Medizinhistorisches Zürich,” ➝.
Daniel Kurz, “Is Housing for Old Age Really So Different?,” in werk, bauen + wohnen 9 Autonom im Alter (2019): 2.
See “Eine sozialpolitische Pionierleistung seit 1950,” SAW, accessed July 10, 2025, ➝.
See Andreas Hofer, “Von Der Familienwohnung Zum Cluster-Grundriss,” Tec21 23, no. 7 (11 February 2011): 23–32.
Others include Wogeno, Karthago, Dreieck, and Kalkbreite. For more on the younger generation of Zurich cooperatives see Irina Davidovici, “Ideology and Collective Life: Zurich’s New Cooperatives,” in New Housing in Zurich. Typologies for a Changing Society, ed. Dominique Boudet (Zurich: Park Book, 2017), 203–8; Irina Davidovici, “Co-Op City: Utopia and Pragmatism in Zurich’s Co-Operative Housing,” in Housing the Co-Op. A Micro-Political Manifesto, ed. Sascha Delz et al. (Berlin: Ruby Press, 2020), 177–92.
“Portrait,” Kraftwerk1 Building and Housing Cooperative Zurich, Switzerland, accessed 2 July 2025, ➝.
See Martin Blum et al., KraftWerk 1: Projekt für das Sulzer-Escher Wyss Areal (Zürich: Paranoia-City, 1993).
See “Kraftwerk1 Hardturm,” Kraftwerk1 Building and Housing Cooperative Zurich, Switzerland, accessed 2 July 2025, ➝.
For more on the initial consultation processes see Marco Hoffmann and Andreas Huber, Begleitstudie Kraftwerk1 Heizenholz: 2010–2014 (Zürich: ImmoQ, 2014), 18–23.
See Hofer, “Von Der Familienwohnung Zum Cluster-Grundriss.”
Of ca. 3,150 m2 residential space, the WGs and clusters take ca. 1,200 m2. See the building’s spatial and room program at ➝, accessed 18 October 2025.
Claudia Thiesen in conversation with the author, Kraftwerk1 Heizenholz, Zurich Höngg, June 19, 2025.
Hoffmann and Huber, Begleitstudie Kraftwerk1 Heizenholz: 2010–2014.
More than 40 percent of Seefeld inhabitants are non-Swiss, mostly from Germany followed by France, Italy, Spain, the US, and UK. For more information see Statistics Office of the City of Zurich, Quartierspiegel Seefeld 2025, July 2025, ➝, 3, 17–19.
In the absence of municipal land reserves in Seefeld, the site was secured through changes in the planning law. See “Mehr bezahlbarer Wohnraum im Quartier,” Stadt Zürich, ➝.
Translated freely from the letter of motivation written as part of GWA’s application for Hornbach housing, October 2020. Letter shared courtesy of Elisabeth Bauer.
Initially a squatter’s group that occupied a contested site in Stauffacher, in central Zurich, Kartago was later constituted as an association, then in 1995, as a cooperative, which allowed its members the financial conditions to raise capital and purchase property. The Karthago cooperative is located in an existing building refurbished to accommodate WGs and a large communal kitchen.
Leonard Fister et al., Wohnen im Alter. Eine empirische Untersuchung
der Wohnsituation und -mobilität älterer Menschen in der Schweiz (Bundesamt für Wohnungswesen, Bern, 2025).
Data extracted from the presentation “Ideenskizze der Gruppe Gemeinschaftliches Wohnen im Alter” (Ideas Sketch of the Group Communal Living in Old Age) made by the Tiefenbrunnen residents to the City of Zurich Real Estate in 2011, courtesy of Elisabeth Bauer.
