Over the last thirty years, Switzerland's largest city, Zurich, has developed into a metropolitan region, with new centres and urban networks extending even beyond the cantonal borders. This metropolitan territory is divided by cantonal and municipal borders and fragmented into small-scale political entities. 

How to conceptualise, plan and design Zurich on this new scale? How to imagine a region as a large metropolitan area? Through both urban research and design, this study explores the urban potentials of Lake Zurich as the focal landscape element in the region, which forms its symbolic centre and serves as its integrative figure.