Locomotive Town Winterthur

Where locomotives and machines were once built, an urban living space with residential buildings, town squares, commerce, restaurants and offices for over 1500 people has been created on the former Sulzer site in lively Winterthur. Gruner was commissioned to design the supporting structure for three further sub-projects on the locomotive town site.

The project was planned and realised using BIM (Building Information Modelling). The excavation pit was created with a back-anchored nail wall. The entire basement is single-sided and without backfilling. Several neighbouring parts of the building were supported and secured with micropiles. The draisine hall had to be supported in advance with a timber construction.

In the BigBoy residential building with a height of 50 m, around 130 rental flats were built on 16 floors, directly on the central town square (Dialogplatz). The Tender building is adjacent to the BigBoy and is closely linked to it architecturally. It comprises 80 high-quality condominium flats. The connected two basement floors extend over the entire area of the building complex. The car park on the first basement floor is accessed via the Krokodil passageway and is connected to the Elefant building via a tunnel under the Habersack. Further access to the bicycle parking spaces is via a ramp in the Tender high-rise building.

The supporting structure is a skeleton construction with in-situ concrete ceilings, concrete walls and prefabricated respectively in-situ concrete columns. A minimum use of 50 per cent RC concrete was required and implemented. The entire building complex was built on a shallow foundation.

The 2-storey draisine hall, which is partially under a preservation order, was also remodelled and restored.

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