FS20 Studio Tom Emerson

This week we’ve written down our concept and then we translate it into architectural space. Since our goal is to create a psychological pharmacy we traced a “Freud’s promenade” into the untouched neo-classical building envelop.

This journey bring the patient from his super ego through his id to his ego.

We choose the corner at the Rennweg at Bahnhofstrasse. Many axes meet each other; it’s a hectic place, with a lot of traffic. At the same time, it is the very center of Bahnhofstrasse, where everyone has to pass through. 

In this well known, everyday place we put our Mirror Object. It is a moment of disorder and thus will be recognized and memorized.

It tears apart the surrounding reality and reassembles it again. In this reassembly, it places its products, which become a part of it.

Our basic interest in this project is to connect the toilet on Bürkliplatz with a flower shop. We thought about keeping the toilets in the four corners of the building with their sink between them on two sides. In this proposal we would use the rest of the building, namely the middle, for a very transparent flower shop, which is actually self-sustaining. We wanted to do a more ecological approach on selling flowers. Within the shop we create a kind of vertical flower farm with the principle of hydroponics. With that principle, being much more efficient, we should be able to produce the flowers we want to sell right within the shop. So we don’t have to ship the from anywhere, use a lot less resources, like water and ground and are able to control the growing process quite precisely. For the facade we decided to keep the existing studs and most of the structure and just fill in translucent windows between the studs.

“The term vertical garden refers to any kind of construction and support structure for growing plants in an upwards-directed, vertical way and thereby efficiently and productively making use of the existing space for food or other kind of plant production. A huge variety of different designs and concepts are available including greywater towers, green walls or living walls. The reuse of different composts (e.g. compost, vermicompost or terra preta) from household wastes and reclaimed water (e.g. greywater) or urine can be considered in vertical gardening allowing to enhance food production and to close the nutrient and water cycle at a local level.”