unfinished is an artistic project, a site-specific video walk created for the newly built district of Manegg in Zurich, Switzerland. Co-produced with Gessnerallee Zurich, the work premiered in May and June 2024, with further presentations anticipated in 2025. The project centres on a single-shot, steadycam video that traces a continuous walking route through the evolving urban landscape. Audience members receive the video on tablets and, equipped with headphones, follow the filmed path on location, synchronised in movement, position, and perspective with the onscreen walker. The site—Manegg—is a recently developed district on the grounds of a former paper factory, now demolished and replaced by mixed-use residential and commercial buildings. Marketed as “Greencity”, this territory presents a still-emerging, ecologically branded urban environment, shaped by corporate narratives of sustainability. The film draws on in-depth research and interviews with residents and planners, offering commentary on the space’s material, aesthetic, and socio-ecological textures. Through voiceover and image, it constructs a reflective and at times spectral narrative, layering memory, presence, and potential futures. By integrating archival imagery and animation, the film envisions past industrial functions alongside speculative projections of urban transformation. The soundscape heightens the immersive experience, inviting a critical reading of the processes of urban development. unfinished positions Zurich-Manegg as a case study of peripheral expansion in European cities, revealing how contemporary architecture often generates generic environments driven by corporate logics. The project remains open-ended, inviting new modes of seeing and inhabiting spaces in flux.
Lukas Sander (Mon,) studied this question.