In the course of just a few decades Emmen has grown from a farming village into a town the size of Sion. But Emmen remains an agglomeration without an old town or a centre. Defining a new use for the Monosuisse site located directly beside the River Emme now offers an opportunity to give the town a centre. The existing buildings in this industrial conglomerate are of impressive quality. The site is a kind of town within the town. The diversity of volumes, facades and typologies creates highly differentiated open public spaces with a genuinely urban character. Our project is developed on the basis of four fundamental theses: we postulate:

– Programmatically activating the centre and linking it more effectively to the railway station and other districts.
– Bringing the town to the river by opening up the site.
– Increasing the urban quality on the site and developing it further,
– Preserving the diversity of the existing buildings and strategically expanding it.