Modulverantwortung: Peter Althaus
Lehrteam: Felix Wettstein, Stefan Wülser, Céline Bessire, Matthias Winter, Didier Balissat, Joni Kaçani
Assistant: Olin Petzold

Adopting a critical perspective on growth, the Lucerne through station (Durchgangsbahnhof Luzern), which is currently in the planning stages, will serve as a catalyst for the upcoming design semester and form the basis for the master’s thesis. This infrastructure project provides an opportunity to reorganise the inner-city rail yards, offering the potential for a new urban vision for central Lucerne.

Specifically, the thesis will focus on the southern rail yard area around Steghof. This site is far from a blank slate. In the immediate vicinity, the Industriestrasse Luzern cooperative is exploring what cooperative planning, building and living could look like today. Further along on Ahornstrasse, the city is considering covering the tracks to create a new linear park. Within the planning area itself are a locomotive depot and a historic transformer station. The Neubad, which the Netzwerk Neubad association is using for cultural events as an interim use, is directly across the street. Engaging with this dense context requires an in-depth examination of the city’s historical development, and the planning of the rail yard should not be mistaken for the often-cited greenfield project. In this master’s thesis, we rather seek new urban building blocks that interact critically with what already exists.

The annual theme +120’955 – Lucerne 2050 provides the conceptual framework. As the population is projected to grow, the existing conflicts of interest between different societal needs will intensify. Against this backdrop, the goal is to develop designs that spatially represent the critical negotiation process between these differing needs, thus revealing relevant architectural solutions for an ambiguous future.