On the southern edge of Adliswil, between the railway line and the Sihl, the temporary asylum centre built in 1990 is being replaced by a contemporary facility for 140 asylum seekers. The area is characterized by the curved riverbed of the Sihl, the surrounding landscape and the adjacent Rudolf Steiner School Sihlau.
The new complex takes up the scale of the adjacent School and organizes all usable spaces in a compact building parallel to the Sihlstrasse. The block is set back slightly from the street, creating a green area to the south and a reception area on the north-west side of the plot. Analogous to the school, the complex opens up to the northeast towards Sihlstrasse.
The new asylum centre is an accommodation facility that functions as a social threshold for people from a wide range of nations with different cultural and social backgrounds. This threshold, the "in-between", functions as a transitional space between the individual and the community. This in-between space serves as a prerequisite both for individual development and for meeting and interacting with the community. The new building is designed as a compact row along Sihlstrasse and organizes the living spaces for women, men and families requested in the spatial program in a cluster-like manner. The two-sided common rooms and access balconies are meeting places for the residents. The south-facing veranda can be occupied as a freely interpretable transitional space between inside and outside, protecting and exposing at the same time. It stages the metamorphosis of the residents' change of life and their transition into a new world that awaits them.
The new building is designed with a high degree of prefabrication with a timber structure, which will allow the complex to be built within 12 months. The supporting structure and the foundation are consequently planned in wood. The entire supporting structure will be prefabricated in individual modules made of wood. The supporting structure of the arcades consists of a skeleton made of larch wood with prefabricated concrete slabs as covering. The wooden frames of the individual modules are used as horizontal stabilization of the building.
