Once tear down and rebuild, please

Once, and rebuild, please, There is this irritating photo series from the seventies. The first picture is the Hotel Savoy shows on the parade square, the sight of which in Zurich is familiar to everybody. It recordings, which is how this construction of one piece is removed, until it is gone follow. And as he then is built up, piece by piece, until he's standing like in the first picture. The photo series extends from the autumn of 1975 until the autumn of 1977. Who is not familiar with the backgrounds, can't make a rhyme to this madness.

to tell This story is worth it, in times, in which Zurich seems to be of a conservational mind possessed. This is manifested, for example, in two cases: As the new Congress centre on the lake, which failed at the ballot box in 2008 was because a majority did not want to sacrifice the old building from the Thirties of the architectural firm Haefeli Moser Steiger. And since the new high school district, which needs to be built because of the homeland protection tedious ums old hospital of Haefeli Moser Steiger is currently the case – although this building as a hospital is not worth more.

Other dealing with historic houses

At the Hotel Savoy shows that Zurich is also handled differently with cherished historic houses. That there are shades between preservation and demolition. No matter how you assessed this.

the main actor of the first part of this story is, of all things, Max Haefeli, the father of that Haefeli, who belonged to the Trio of Haefeli Moser Steiger. He started in 1906 with his office partner Otto Pfleghard a controversy when he made to create research-based at the Hotel Savoy, then Baur en Ville was called. This was not just any house, but an Institution: the first Hotel in Zurich, where it previously only Inns. When it was opened in 1838, vis-à-vis the stagecoach station, was digging today's Bahnhofstrasse is still a water and the Paradeplatz, a pig market. A striking facade with neo-classical colonnade, had the building been at that time, but it is two floors lower.

The original building of 1838. Image: ETH picture archive

Haefeli and Pfleghard should rebuild in the years come Hotel, and wanted to modernize it – in the neo-Baroque style, with round balconies instead of columns. The home protection rebelled, the Public was outraged.

The first draft for the new building of the architects Haefeli and Pfleghard. Image: PD

The architects revised wrote therefore to their plans, to take account of "the lively desire of the city's population" and to preserve the appearance of the parade square, "possible", as the trade press. So, the house gained its present appearance: two floors higher, with columns instead of pillars. A logical development of the original construction. You can find the despondent. Or pretty clever.

same game, other output

In the seventies the game, but with a different output. The Hotel had again become dilapidated – in need of a nightmare for fire, police and health Inspectorate, for the operator. The logical consequence would have been: demolition and replacement Building. But on the parade square, the Trauma of the modern UBS building from the fifties to have an impact, it has remained a foreign body. For the urban curators was clear: A new Hotel in the style of the time would have enriched this place. So the idea came up, the house auszukernen and only to preserve the facades. But the risk proved to be too big, it's a cave-in threatened.

Therefore, fell the decision for a radical Alternative: the building is complete, to repay, to build a new and the historic facade. This has been documented down to the last Detail. Some parts were kept and re-used, other means of plaster casts and copied and reconstructed, in part, in art-instead of sand stone. Five million francs, the expenses amounted to for the owners of the hotel. The money they raised voluntarily, because the house was never listed.

Who enters the Hotel Savoy today, unprepared, experienced, therefore, a Surprise. Only the festival hall on the upper floor is reminiscent of the long history of the house. The Rest is modernised seventies functionality. Or in other words: The Hotel Savoy is a forty-year-old with the lifted face of a hundred-year-old wants to look like a 180-Year-old.

The weekly column "building zone" is dedicated to the many unusual, exciting, ugly, or somehow slanted houses that are everywhere in the Canton of Zurich. The well over a hundred previously published articles, you will find a construction zone here:.tagesanzeiger.ch (Tages-Anzeiger)

Created: 14.05.2019, 15:00