Description

Urban context

This solitary building is located in a former villa neighborhood near the center
of Zurich that is now characterized by heterogeneous architecture but has still
conserved its trees. This multifamily building with five units is accessed from
the street to the south.

Ground-floor zone

Taking advantage of the natural slope, this rectangular form is set back from the
street, elevated and distanced on an existing plateau of the terrain. The
building has no open spaces on the ground floor. Access to the house is
underground, through a space cut out of the slope. Cars drive directly from the
street level into the underground garage. Via a closed, solid stairway,
pedestrians enter the central hall of the sunken entrance level above, which
houses only utility rooms. From there stairs and an elevator lead on to the
first residential floor, the slab of whose floor seems to float above the
naturally rising terrain. The path to the front doors of the apartments leads
through dark, closed-off interiors.

Building structure

This point block, which has central vertical point access to two units on each
floor, unites the five apartments, the parking garage, and various multipurpose
rooms. The rooms are formed from massive concrete wall plates, which in the
Miesian tradition are concentrated in the center of the floor plan. Free
placement of the walls eliminates any hierarchy of serving and served spaces.
The flowing, thresholdless shaping of the space results in deliberately placed
views through the units between dark and bright areas. In the exterior spaces
corners were intentionally avoided. The thermal enclosure of the space is
achieved by a continuous glass layer placed between the massive floor levels.
Hence the facade does not stop the gaze but rather radically integrates the
landscape into the living environment.

Facade

The projecting floor slabs and a few wall plates that penetrate into the contours
of the building create an abstract figure. The transparent outer skin that
surrounds the interior recedes on all sides behind this concrete structure. The
building’s imposing character is expressed by the sublime display of its
residents’ individual lifestyles. Despite the radical opening of the facades,
views from the street are blocked by the broadly projecting solid floor slabs.
In addition, curtains that extend all around the living spaces can be drawn in
front of the glass skin as a protective layer and provide a certain degree of
intimacy in the interior.

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