Rural Park II

Bleiche Wies, Bleiche Estate, Wald, CH

Transformation of a rural canal-side meadow into a community park for two planned residential buildings on a former textile industry estate.

The converted textile mills and new buildings of the Bleiche estate are situated within steep, hilly meadowland on the edge of the town of Wald. At the heart of the estate is the Bleiche Wies, a large canal-side meadow. The meadow has long been prone to water-logging and unsuitable for cultivation, conditions partly explained by close to surface bedrock impermeable to groundwater and snowmelt. The meadow has mostly been farmed for cattle and has low bio-diversity. Planned development will fundamentally change the settlement structure and landscape character of the site and the Bleiche Wies is to become a place of recreation at a scale no longer correspondent to farmland, but rather to that of a park.

The project aim is to increase the biodiversity of the site using rural landscape elements – solitaire fruit and nut trees, mixed hedgerow, meadows and gravel vegetation typical of the region. At the same time the client requires the new park to become a communal and family-friendly environment with a pavilion and play area to attract home-buyers and tenants to the estate.  Access, parking and maintenance infrastructure for the new buildings must be carefully resolved, taking into account the cultural as well as ecological value of the site.

Client:

O + J Honegger AG
Bleiche Estate, Wald

Commission type:

Direct commission

Phases:

SIA Phases 31-41
SIA Phases 51-53 as Design Lead
with MGH Architekten supporting.
Project ongoing, completition due 2027

Scale and Budget:

2 Hectare, CHF 1.5 Million

Team constellation (primary relationships):

Andreas Honegger, Bleiche Estate, Client;
Oliver Hagen, Topik Partner AG, Client Advisor;
Christoph Schneider, MGH Architekten;
Schaub Zwicky Architekten.