Quality of Langstrasse

One of the significant features of Langstrasse is the immediate understanding of activities and functions to be identified in one sequence. A pedestrian or a car driver immediately senses -even if in a superficial way- the characteristics of the area, by walking the street or passing by. All along the street, building facades are operating as interfaces between users and activities – gastronomies, shops, sex-related services, bars etc… Those interfaces are identified key elements to Langstrasse’s identity. Does an extended Langstrasse implies the repetition of those activities spread over a significant surface ? Couldn’t it be concentrated in several higher buildings and leave more space for other functions?

Vertical Langstrasse
If this quality of Langstrasse, its rich diversity of decent stores and amoral services, should be extended, we suggest that activities do not have to happen and be visible only at street level but could extend vertically, in order to offer further functions to develop around. The façade prototype is a combination of different floor heights and various interior programs such as restaurants, cafés, sex shops, gyms, green houses and residential parts. Each program has the appropriate floor height and exposes its color and character towards the outside through show-windows. Other windows have classical shapes and that implies a palace of human activities.

This vertical view of the Langstrasse can also be red as analytic visions that allow an immediate and condense understanding of today’s situation, transposed in a vertical city.

OMNIBUS was also present at the podium discussion organized by TRANS on the 19. June!

Link
Architekturforum Zürich: http://www.af-z.ch/langstrasseverlaengern