Tests and References, ZSC Arena, Zurich 2012-22

We often include references in our competition submissions: images of places and buildings that hold something of the atmosphere that we intend for the completed project.

For the ZSC Arena, we wanted to underline our interest in giving this sports building civic qualities appropriate to its social programme and to its position as a gateway into the city from the north west. We included images of the tents for the Swedish royal family at Hagaparken and an ancient mosque in the Syrian desert.
In the long process of developing the design for the in-situ concrete ‘textile’ façade, we continued to use references, to architecture by Schinkel and etchings by Flaxman, to get ever closer to the image of what we were after.

 
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Adam Caruso was born in Montreal and studied architecture at McGill University. He established Caruso St John Architects with Peter St John in 1990. The practice won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2016 for the Newport Street Gallery and represented Britain at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Adam Caruso is Professor of Architecture and Construction at ETH Zürich.