On the outskirts of Zurich, in the industrial quarter of Escher-Wyss, stood the abandoned old warehouse of what was once a textile factory. The Escher Terrassen project has transformed it into a venue for rehearsals of the city’s opera company, and annexed to it a 60-meter-tall apartment tower.

The original facade of the low building has not only been preserved; it has been enlarged, in accordance with a formal logic of its own, and it has been modified, its arched windows filled in and closed with gray brick. The residential building, which is interwoven with the former manufacturing facility, contains a total of fifty living units and slants on one side to form terraced balconies that offer spectacular and expansive views of the Swiss city and the lake of Zurich. The dwellings themselves are modular in configuration and stacked, one atop another; and it is precisely this stacking that gives rise to the new tower’s pyramidal trunk form. In this way, the most characteristic elements of the former industrial facility – the warehouse and the arches on its facade – have been preserved and enhanced, while the new construction – the apartment tower – has been merged with the recent past of the site...[+][+]