2000-2025: An Interim Report / The Experience of Time
Around the turn of the millennium, Zurich was a city in transformation, evolving from a somewhat staid banking city to a hip, booming international centre. The development of the former ABB industrial site into a residential neighbourhood was the first major development for a city that was still finding its confidence. Oerliker Park was the first of four neighbourhood parks in Zurich North, establishing a public space as a nucleus for an uncertain future. It was an investment in an unknown future, an experiment imbued with a pioneering spirit. Without traces of permanence, partly on a sealed contaminated site and without specific user needs, the place had to reinvent itself.
The invention was the experience of time, a place meant to develop alongside the neighbourhood; a space intended to grow and change. The driving force behind this transformation was the planting of approximately 1,000 trees in a grid pattern around a wooden clearing. Most of the trees were ash, chosen for their low maintenance requirements (a decision that turned out to be a bit of a mistake). In dialogue with these trees stand three iconic concrete sculptures: Pavilion, Tower, and Fountain by Christoph Haerle. With these small trees (the stakes were taller than the trees), growth was staged, promising to form a mighty tree canopy in an uncertain future. The planting followed forestry principles in a tight grid that could be thinned over time. A set of rules described the possibilities of adding uses or clearing whole sections of trees if parts of the contaminated site cover became compromised.
Things turn out differently: Ash dieback, Heat mitigation, and biodiversity
Once an idea is placed in a city, as designers of the spaces, we can usually only accompany it benevolently, and sometimes, if necessary, support it vigorously.
The first years went according to plan: the neighborhood grew with the trees, the park found its users, and we were able to continuously implement play areas and amenities.
However, the emergence of ash dieback in the mid-2010s brought the calm development of the park to an end in an unexpected way. The ashes on the park side, built on the contaminated site cover, proved too weak against the fungus. We could not thin out the grid as planned, but were able to replant large sections. We learned our lesson on diversity and planted (based on current knowledge) more resilient species in great variety.
Amid the heat mitigation issue, the park has gained great importance for the neighborhood, which we did not foresee. Originally conceived primarily as a spatial setting in the neighborhood, the part of the park where the trees grew as planned has become an extremely popular cool retreat, a dense urban forest as one wishes to see everywhere today. No one, at least for the moment, would think of thinning the trees.
In the coming years, the park will receive an upgrade as part of the city’s efforts to increase biodiversity. While the focus has so far been primarily on the spatially effective tree level, we are currently working on concepts for more structurally diverse surfaces.
Looking back, it is evident that the radical grid structure with the structurally implanted change gene has proven to be very sustainable. The park is and remains a living organism, palpable lived time.
Client: Grün Stadt Zürich
Other designers involved in the design of landscape: S. Hubacher, Zürich; Ch. Haerle, Zürich
Project location: Birchstrasse Zürich Oerlikon, Switzerland
Design year: 1997, 1st Prize
Year Built: 1999–2001
Photographer: René Rötheli, Giorgio von Arb, Daniela Valentini
Manufacturer of urban equipment: Bürri Design
