Description

Urban context

Wünnewil-Flamatt municipality, with a population of five thousand, exemplifies
the overdeveloped landscape of many places in Switzerland. The image of the
municipality, which was once a village dominated by agriculture, is now
dominated by various multiregional lines of infrastructure and heterogeneous
architectural textures. Since the 1970s a highway has cut through the old center
of the village, which is also spanned by a massive viaduct. The architectural
firm Atelier 5 implanted into that context three building complexes over the
course of nearly thirty years. Flamatt 3 is the last of these compact building
blocks, and together they form a development-like ensemble.

Ground-floor zone

The goal of this project was to preserve the private sphere of the individual
units, despite the high density. The housing units are staggered in two elevated
rows, one starting a floor higher than the other. As a result, beneath the
eastern part there is an open, two-story hall for common use; on the ground
floor it provides room for cars and connects to two studios for commercial use.
Stairs lead up to a gallery floor on stilts with a ring-shaped access gallery.
The doors to the individual apartments are reached via footbridges and stairs.
Large storage rooms provide a buffer zone for the private space.

Building structure

Flamatt 3 connects ten stacked atrium row houses of various sizes and two small
studios with a shared parking garage to form a compact building. The deep units
dovetail interior and exterior spaces into a continuum that is carefully
shielded from prying eyes. Diverse architectural and spatial threshold forms
maximize privacy.

Facade

The units come together into a succinct, self-contained-looking form, whose
outward facade is not as important as the spaces it forms inside. The
cluster-like structure creates an inward-looking communal milieu, which is in
turn clearly demarcated from the private space. The individual apartments
resemble single-family homes, which is underscored by the fact that each unit is
accessed by a separate front door. Nevertheless, the combination of access,
communal spaces, and infrastructure results in a totality that can be
experienced spatially.

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Originally published in: Ulrike Wietzorrek, Housing+: On Thresholds, Transitions, and Transparencies, Birkhäuser, 2014.