10 Jahre Genossenschaft Kalkbreite: Jubiläumsfest vom 16.9.2017.

10 Years of Kalkbreite Cooperative

It was a huge surprise when it became known in September 2007 that the Kalkbreite Cooperative, which had only been founded two months earlier, would be granted building rights to the Kalkbreite site. “After this decision, the first celebration took place, and then we set to work and designed the multi-layered spacial program that we see implemented today.” said Res Keller, long-term Managing Director of the cooperative. On 15 and 16 September 2017, the cooperative celebrated its 10th anniversary.  We reflected on the past 10 years, discussed current life topics in the city with guests over good food, drink and music.

Platform for political topics

A key event was the political afternoon, during which we discussed questions on the topic of “Who owns Zurich? High-profile guests such as National Councilor Jacqueline Badran or City Councilor Richard Wolff discussed various important topics and were not afraid to take controversial standpoints.

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“You can’t increase land if demand rises,” said National Councilor Jacqueline Badran at the first panel discussion. In a conversation with Michael Hauser and Caspar Schärer, she set out her vision and pleaded for the entire land to become the property of the people in order to create the conditions for this valuable good to be dealt with fairly. At the second panel discussion, FDP councilor Pablo Bünger ventured “into the lion’s den”, as he himself said, and discussed the question “for whom are we building?” with Manuela Schiller from the Zurich Tenants’ Association and Daniel Kurz as moderator. The main topic of controversy was the content of his individual initiative of 2013, which had been submitted under the title “Fairness among state-supported housing developers”. However, Pablo Bünger was not able to convince those present of the content. The third panel discussion focused on a City Card which, as an officially issued document, is intended to enable the City of Zurich, among other things, to acquire a legal identity card in Zurich. A prominent guest was police chief Richard Wolff, who, accompanied by Bea Schwager and Peter Niederöst under the leadership of Daniel Stern, explained the difficulties the police face in certain cases. It seemed that he no longer needed to be convinced of the concerns for the Sans Papiers, but what was missing was a clear idea to implement and improve their status in Zurich. However, Richard Wolff anticipates indications on the right idea and an implementation strategy from various studies that are currently being developed.

The companions

We took the occasion of the anniversary to ask various individuals about the Kalkbreite Cooperative who were or are involved in its history in various ways. This list of people could be extended almost endlessly with people who have accompanied Kalkbreite. However, as this exceeds our resources, they should be seen as examples among many (videos in German only)

Res Keller, Co-Founder o Kalkbreite Association and Cooperative and it’s first CEO talks about the beginning:

Erster Teil (1,38 Minuten)

Zweiter Teil (1,49 Minuten)

Martin Vollenwyder, previous City Councilor of Zürich (1,6 Minutes).

Madeleine Hirsch, resident (3 Minutes).

Dimphie Slooters, member of the Kalkbreite Cooperative, talks abot the beginning of Zollhaus project (2,5 Minutes).

Daniel Leupi, City Councilor of Zurich (1,5 Minutes) speaks about the new Zollhaus project.

<strong>Ruth Gurny, President</strong>, spekas about the first 10 years of Kalkbreite Cooperative (28 Minutes)