JAN BAUER

Sensing Seebach

2021
Design Studio Freek Persyn

with Linus Arnold, Julian Volken

Street crossing in Seebach with coop centre
Arcade and forecourt of a Seebach retail building
Fenced vacant lot in Seebach under a grey sky

Our investigation of Seebach was motivated by the question: What is quality for all? Sensing and trying to make sense of eebach produced the realisations: Initially, the space oftentimes comes across bleak, as if it suffered from a lack of abundance.

The opportunity to analyze the space repeatedly, however, reveals the opposite: everywhere history, opportunities — many hidden layers of information.

As information became Knowledge, our subjective experiences improved. The alienating effect of the simple-clean-boring mask lifted to reveal the complexity and abundance and their part in a normal and familiar human experience: The issue lies therefore in communication. We used this to identify a duty for Architecture, the surface of the built environment.

We explored the nature of hidden abundance, how to read, translate and express it. The product is two short films.

Movie 1: Public Sentiment

Film still: Urban Emotion title over a dense facade
Film still: handwritten matrix exposed–crowded, open–claustrophobic
Film still: What do people want?
Film still: note — we have active relationships with everything surrounding us
Film still: I want to learn how to speak public sentiment
Film still: gathering herbs while walking through your urban fabric is cooler than not

Movie 2: Sensing Abundance

Historic photograph of the excavation of Grünhaldenstrasse
“8000 Russians camped at the site during the battle of Zurich, 1799. During construction of Grünhaldenstrasse around 1900, sabers and other military items were found.”
AI-generated reinterpretation of a Seebach block
Corner building in Seebach today
AI-generated underground club scene
Gravel heap of the former Schürbach river
“Some 20’000 years ago, a small river called ‘Schürbach’ heaped up a lot of stones at the location we’re looking at, which lead to a small elevotion.”
AI-generated modernist block with figures
“At the time the block was built as it stands today, it was perceived as a symbol of modernism in seebach.”
AI-generated interior of the Keller hardware workshop
“In 1952, E. Keller opens a hardware store. In the workshop in the back he fiddled around with new keysystems and invented the Keso lock in 1959.”
Facade grid of a Seebach tower
AI-generated abstraction of an efficient floorplan
“The right angles, the clearly recognizable grid in the facade and an efficient floorplan are evidence to the structures that dominated construction as well as society.”
Street view with office buildings in Seebach
Tower and crane over Seebach rooftops
ETH pavilion at the Seebach railway
Movie 2: Sensing Abundance — excerpt