When architectural monuments pack their suitcases

An entire area at Wollishofen station is being reinvented. A historic timber building is being dismantled and reassembled at a different location. What sounds like a compromise is actually a solution that sacrifices neither residential construction nor monument protection. After more than ten years of planning, the planning application has been submitted. SBB is getting serious.

Two apartment buildings with 57 apartments ranging in size from 2.5 to 5.5 rooms are being built on a 6500 square meter site to the north of the historic station building. Commercial and restaurant space is planned on the first floors, as well as a small commercial building and an underground garage with 59 car and 92 bicycle parking spaces. A park-like open space with a playground will be created between the two buildings.

Less, but social
The project has become smaller. SBB originally planned four buildings with 90 apartments, a third of which would be affordable. However, the signal box next to the station building must remain, which means that an entire building is no longer needed. Of the remaining 57 apartments, 20 are to be offered at affordable prices. This corresponds to 35 percent and is even slightly higher than the original quota.

Switzerland’s last goods shed
What residential construction demands requires space. Four existing buildings have to make way, including the goods shed from 1928, designed by Meinrad Lorenz, SBB’s chief architect at the time, one of only four buildings of this type in the whole of Switzerland. Following the demolition of the identical shed in Heerbrugg, the one in Wollishofen is the last remaining example of its kind. It is listed in the cantonal inventory of listed buildings.

A wooden building packs its bags
Nevertheless, the goods shed will not disappear. It will be dismantled into individual parts, professionally refurbished and rebuilt at the Zurich Oberland Steam Railway Association in Bauma an der Töss. There it will be made accessible to the public and given a museum function as part of the “Bauma 2020 depot area” project. The approval documents for the dismantling are already largely in place.

History repeats itself
This move is not the first in the history of Wollishofen station. The current station building was once the first station building in the city of Zug, built in 1864 and moved stone by stone to Lake Zurich in 1897. What was forced by the scarcity of building materials in the 19th century is now a deliberate act of preservation. Wollishofen is thus writing another chapter in an unusual building history.