Description
The building on Waldmeisterweg replaces an earlier building and is the product of a competition won in 2013 for the Zurich-based PWG Foundation, which operates and constructs low-cost rental housing. The angular, polygonal shape of the new building makes maximum use of the site as permitted by the regulations.
The building presents a prominent frontage to the small street of the Waldmeisterweg to the north, where the entrance is, and an equally distinctive garden façade faces south towards the slight slope, made all the more apparent by a pronounced pointed corner jutting out into the garden.
The building is a critique of contemporary housing construction. The building’s design employs – to use a fashionable phrase – the means of narrative. Not only have spatial and architectural contexts become increasingly fragile, so too have the typological and social contexts, which are no longer as self-evident and cohesive as some would like. The architects at Lütjens Padmanabhan begin by making reference – without any obvious reason – to a work by one of their favourite architects: the Lieb House (1969) by Venturi Scott Brown. The building design therefore acquires the narrative strand of a “beach house”, which influences the design of the entrance hall and adjacent washroom, as well as the sloping driveway of the garage and the design of the semi-public spaces with their applied pop-art surfaces.
The ground plan typology likewise aligns with this frame of reference. The lower-lying kitchen-living area connects to the large loggias and with its pivotal element – a black, load-bearing terrazzo support – at the point where the space transitions into the living room creates a hybrid space that is both cellular apartment and spatial continuum. Even comparatively banal aspects, such as the design of simple bathrooms and the arrangement of the small bathroom window as a skylight are woven into the narrative. The reference to the beach house serves an aesthetic tool with which to create approachable architecture that openly blends into the neighbourhood but also makes effective use of space.
Drawings
Site plan, scale 1:2000
Ground floor plan, scale 1:500
Third floor plan, scale 1:500
Fifth floor plan, scale 1:500
Elevation north-east, scale 1:500
Elevation south-east , scale 1:500
Elevation south-west, scale 1:500
Photos
Dark pilaster strips give rhythm to the light façade of the new building. Triangular motifs appear repeatedly.
Interior view of the staircase