Faced with questions about how to adapt and reuse a former industrial site in the center of town, an international insurance corporation, together with the Swiss city of Winterthur, held a competition among architecture and design firms to come up with an innovative, effective plan. The winning firm was the Vienna-based Architekt Krischanitz, and their submission, Superblock, is a striking idea given a brilliant execution: it combines a large workshop where diesel engines were assembled with newly constructed yet visually complementary buildings.
This book details the project from concept to completion, using numerous photographs, plans, and visualizations to trace the history of the site, the genesis and development of the Superblock concept, and the revitalization of the neighborhood that it is expected to lead.