Building a sustainable neighbourhood in Winterthur

Implenia is developing and building a whole new neighbourhood in the middle of Winterthur: Lokstadt. The city’s first 2000-Watt site will provide a wide variety of housing for 1,500 people.

Lokstadt should be completed in 2025, which will bring the repurposing of the large industrial sites in Winterthur’s city centre to a conclusion. Implenia was awarded the contract to preserve and gradually develop the area’s historical and industrial heritage, which includes many listed factory buildings and facades. Planning and design has been conducted in close consultation with the City of Winterthur.

In September 2017, Implenia and the city authorities held a ceremony to officially change the name of the neighbourhood, previously ” known as “Werk 1”, to Lokstadt, and to launch the redevelopment work. The name is well chosen: the place where Lokstadt (“Locomotive Town”) is being built once housed the factories of Schweizerische Lokomotiv- und Maschinenfabrik (SLM), once Switzerland’s most important manufacturer of locomotive engines. Many of its models, including the “Elefant” and the “Krokodil” helped write railway history.

Lokstadt extends over an area of around 60,000 square meters – equivalent to eight football fields – one third of which is public space. The new neighbourhood should be integrated seamlessly into the life of the city as a modern counterpart to Winterthur’s lively old town. In its planning work, Implenia was guided by the qualities that make for good city living: diverse usage, quality housing, a good social mix and prudent use of resources.

More than 750 homes are being built in total. Various public spaces will provide plenty of opportunity for recreation and socialising. A good mix of residential, work and leisure space, and a variety of cafés, restaurants and cultural facilities will create a tempting quality of life.

The first building in the Lokstadt development will be “Krokodil”, which is currently under construction by Implenia. “Krokodil”, which brings four different types of home under one roof, is made mostly of wood and will have a large interior courtyard full of greenery. The apartments there will be ready for occupation in 2021.

As the first 2000-Watt Site to be developed in the city of Winterthur, Lokstadt will also enable its future residents to live a sustainable lifestyle. The main features of this pilot project are resource-efficient construction, district heating, green areas with high biological diversity, and reduced car usage. At the “Energy Day” organised by the Federal Office of Energy in Locarno on 11 October 2019, Lokstadt was awarded its initial certificate as a 2000-Watt Site in development. This certification is special for Implenia for several reasons: Lokstadt is the first of Implenia’s own development projects to be developed and built under the 2000-Watt Site regime. Only 31 sites have so far been certified in the whole of Switzerland. 20 of these are, like Lokstadt, still in development. Unlike with other building certificates (such as Minergie), the work required for certification does not end when the building is handed over to the investor. Once in operation, the building can only keep the certification if it is successfully recertified very four years. This is to ensure that the site keeps to the standards in a controlled fashion over the long term.