Description

Urban context

Sargans is a small community with five thousand residents and is located at the
intersection of two Alpine valleys, and hence has always been characterized by
traffic. In an area with heterogeneous neighboring buildings – amid
single-family homes, slabs, and point blocks, this short slab was built right
next to the highway as a striking solitary volume. The clear rectangular volume
is set back from the access road to the south. This creates a small plaza area
with a public character, decorated by two rows of trees. This residential
building deliberately establishes a counterpoint to the sprawling suburban space
so often found in Switzerland.

Ground-floor zone

On the ground floor the building presents a closed wall to the public plaza area.
Storage and recreation areas are hidden behind it. A single opening to the south
marks the access to a spacious lobby inside, in the back of which a stairway
leads up to the private residential floors. Car access is from the north. The
parking places are integrated into the volume of the building.

Building structure

The structure of this residential building is articulated in classical fashion.
Rising from the base on the ground floor are three residential levels, in front
of which to the south a continuous loggia projects as a transition between the
private apartments and the imposing facade. Three apartments on each floor are
accessed by a short corridor. A spacious central entrance hall leads into the
various living spaces inside units and the spacious living hall located on the
south side. Precisely placed openings between the rooms result in exciting
sequences of space in the interior, including some circular paths.

Facade

The succinct volume has its imposing main facade facing south, with the classical
tripartite division into base, wall, and roof. The raw shell is articulated on
this side by a three-story columned facade that grows out of the closed base; it
consists of pilasters distributed irregularly across the entire facade. The
autonomous spatial layer provides private open spaces for the apartments, but at
the same time it makes it difficult to identify the separate units from the
outside and thus unifies the look of the facade. The project is characterized by
an emphasis on the dialectic of public and private space.

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