URBAN
The 1.15 City: Zürich's Dividend Cascades Outward While 1.6 Million Places Wait Inside
Urban scaling says dense cities pay off, yet Zürich lost 21,500 residents to its hinterland. The OECD finds room for 1.6 million inside today's zones.
Stadelhofen Grows Into the Hill: A Fourth Track Inside Zurich's 90-Second Station
SBB adds track 4 35 m into the hill at Zurich Stadelhofen. What a CHF 1.7 bn station, Verkehr '45 and a 90-second rhythm teach Swiss architects.
Cao Fei Zones a Basel Museum Like a City: Seven Districts, No New Walls
Cao Fei and Small Production turn Kunstmuseum Basel's Gegenwart into a seven-district city with paint, floors, seats and signs. Closes 11 October 2026.
What a Tower Owes the Street: Zürich Rewrites Its 2001 High-Rise Rules
Zürich voters adopted stricter high-rise rules: public ground floors from 40 m, a competition for every tower, bonus floor area for affordable housing.
Barcelona's Superblocks Run on an 1859 Rule Set: Cerdà's Chamfered Block, Read a Second Time
Barcelona's superblocks read Cerdà's 1859 chamfered grid a second time. The rule set, the measured health gains, and a GhPython sketch for your own city.
Kalkbreite, Read From the Rails Up: A Small City Stacked on a Working Tram Depot
Kalkbreite in Zürich, read from the rails up: VBZ depot, city ring, raised courtyard, 256 residents, and the written rules that hold the megablock together.
Delirious New York at 48: Koolhaas Mapped Manhattan's Stack Before Building Anything
Rem Koolhaas wrote Manhattan's theory after it was built. What Delirious New York teaches a Zürich Wettbewerb team about stacked uses and shared cores.
A Pattern Language Is a Dependency Graph, Not a Book
Christopher Alexander's 253 patterns form a directed dependency graph. Read them by in-degree and map your office's load-bearing details before scaling AI.
The Riegel Problem: A Nature Cities Paper Prices the Cooling Zürich Already Legislates
A Nature Cities paper prices the cooling that arrives from upwind — and Canton Zürich already maps and legislates it at 5×5 m. Turn the building.
A blind wall, three fixes, three shapes: a dosage curve for fear of crime
Nature Cities randomised windows, graffiti removal and planting on a blind wall at four dosages — three shapes, one gender gap, and a Swiss test still unrun.
