Zürich Bus Station
Credits
Company / Customer
Year
2026
Location
Zurich (CH)
Disciplines
Architecture
Category
Public
Award
Best of Best
Details
The bus station was renovated for a remaining lifespan of 15 years. Due to the short lifespan, the new service building is a simple, raw wooden structure with exposed and direct installations. Future dismantling has already been taken into account: everything can be disassembled easily, and composite materials were avoided wherever possible. The new building marks both the beginning and end of the Zurich bus station, and its height makes it a prominent landmark within the large area.
The Jury‘s Statement
In architecture, too, some things are quite deliberately not intended to last forever. Take the Zurich Bus Station on Sihlquai, for example, which is a perfect example of sustainable and well-thought-out temporary architecture in public infrastructure. Precisely because this temporary structure is only intended to stand for 15 years, a progressive decision was made to use a circular and resource-efficient construction method for the petrol-green timber building. All the materials used are natural, simple, and authentic. It is also exemplary how the ability to dismantle the structure completely— using a plug-in system—was part of the design from the very beginning. And despite the building’s short lifespan, accessibility has by no means been overlooked: with 28 optimised kerb edges, the station offers fully barrier-free platforms throughout.
