The Limits of the Landscape: Pierre Zoelly’s waste incineration plant KEZO in the Zurich Oberland, 1961–76

The Swiss and US-American architect Pierre Zoelly (1923–2003) developed the waste incineration plant KEZO (Zweckverband Zürcher Oberland) in Hinwil in a step-by-step process, together with the engineers of Toscano-Bernardi Frey AG. The founding of KEZO by municipalities in the Zurich Oberland region was a reaction to the explosive growth in waste production. The garbage, which appeared in the form of often "wild" landfills in the middle of the landscape, had increasingly become a disturbing factor, which one wanted to eliminate by a centralized "destruction" of the garbage.

In this focus work, the case study of KEZO is used to investigate the double function of waste incineration plants: the disappearance of waste from the landscape and the incineration of waste as an energy-production process. To understand the complex systemic relationships of landscape, architecture, and the internal processes of combustion, the text examines the building from the outside to the inside. The historical reasons for the construction of the waste incineration plant are considered on the basis of the individual stages of development of the KEZO. An analysis of Pierre Zoelly's design shows that the architect's ambition was to express the dual function of the incinerator through its external form. The well-planned spatial organization also enhanced the performance of the mechanical process. The KEZO did not only represent a “waste power plant,” but it became a “production site” of the landscape, in that the waste incineration caused its regulation. Such a holistic understanding of the KEZO serves to critique waste incineration as the epitome of the linear economic logic of consumerism.