This group of buildings that conform a block, are part of an important integral rehabilitation that took part in one of Zurich’s districts. One of the requirements of the rehabilitation was to replace the original windows, which belonged to a very important typology of windows that were very characteristic of an era in Switzerland.

The original mono-crystal windows had to be substituted by windows with isolating glass of climactic protection.

State of the work

Windows with narrow profiles of Swiss fabrication in the year 1925, in a good state of preservation but with no isolation whatsoever. In some of the buildings there are specially shaped windows, like in an ellipse and/or oval-shaped. Windows with many small beams and small-girders.

Diagnosis

Windows with very narrow profiles, and with restrictive prohibitions by the Protection of the Patrimony Agency to vary the measures. Because the rehabilitation had to take place without evacuating the occupants from their homes, all work had to be done trying to find a solution that overcame any brickwork intervention.

Solution

The depth of the profiles was increased by 14mm, this way the vision of the profile remained unaltered. The encounter between the window frame and the work was carried out according to each case; either enlarging or reducing the frame. Since the measures of the profiles and small beams and small-girders had not practically been modified, it was able to fulfill the rules of the Protection of the Historic Patrimony Agency.

Diagrams