The building is set back slightly from the street on an expansive green lawn. Its footprint measures forty by eighteen meters, and it has four stories crowned by a penthouse level. On the open south side, the branches of the site’s mature trees are reflected in the glazed facade of the winter garden. The apartment house is something between a commercial building and a palazzo.
We began by asking ourselves how one might live away from urban centers, in the so-called countryside. What emerged are apartments with simple large spaces, identical rooms, high doors, and a wood-framed winter garden. The materials are somewhat rustic, and the construction is handcrafted and robust.
And we made a few discoveries in the process: For example, the potential that sheet metal work has for architectural expression, or the importance that ancillary structures can have in anchoring such a large building to its surroundings – with the bicycle shed along the adjoining party wall, the round pavilion on the lawn, or the pergolas and wall segments between the apartment house and the street.
The house on Schulstrasse is our most economical project to date: we were able to build nearly forty apartments here for less than ten million Swiss francs.

The two large buildings comprising the Riedacker cooperative residential development are located in northern Zurich. They are set within a heterogeneous setting between Altwiesenstrasse and Dübendorferstrasse. Here, Albert Steiner’s garden city transitions into the ensembles of late modernism. The immediate context includes single-family and commercial buildings and a church. The two buildings acknowledge Schwamendingen’s garden city qualities, but interpret them in a distinctive configuration and a new mode of living.
This dwelling form centers around a large square space that occupies each corner of the building. The space is divided by two diagonally inserted glass membranes into a kitchen, a living room, and a terrace. We have compared this spatial structure to a arbor and spoken of living on a large terrace. In the four- and five-story buildings, living beside the garden is, as it were, stacked.
The staggered massing is wrapped by a thin outer skin featuring a finely woven network of aluminum, glass, and wood. The bright interiors transition into dark, hard-surfaced stairways, which, for their part, boast exterior qualities – the g arbor of each apartment is, figuratively speaking, directly accessible from the outside and yet part of an interior collective.

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With the commission to build small apartments on Stampfenbachstrasse in Zurich, we sought to create living space that stakes out a position beyond a “downsized” family apartment and beyond an ordinary single-room loft. The idea for such housing builds on the notion of a “performative space” that adapts to the individual needs of its inhabitants: Much like a gown, it wraps around the human body, can be opened and closed, and offers various “pockets” and spaces to store miscellaneous household belongings.
In the spirit of this performance, the basic elements of architecture have been rethought: floor and ceiling, doors and walls, fixtures and furniture, windows, structural elements, curtains, mirrors, etc. In addition to movable elements, platforms along the facade are of particular importance. Here, the floor becomes a surface for sitting or lying on. Linked to this is the idea of living with little furniture. Prior to construction, a mock-up of an exemplary apartment was erected and then studied at ETH Zurich.
The building on Stampfenbachstrasse occupies a corner site opposite the park grounds of the Beckenhof manor, adjoins the existing building to one side and leaves room behind for a small courtyard. The prefabricated wood construction with cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels for walls and floors is built above existing basements. Outside, the apartment house is clad with a thin metallic skin that conceals the construction within.

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The following sponsors and partners have contributed to the success of the mock-up project:
Engel & Völkers Schweiz, Flück Holzbau AG, KLS Müller AG, moyreal immobilien ag, Timbatec Holzbauingenieure Schweiz AG, UTO Real Estate Management AG, Verit Immobilien AG, ABB, Argolite AG, Blumer Techno Fenster AG, Böni Gebäudetechnik AG, Christian Fischbacher Co. AG, Ehrat AG, Electrolux AG, Gerflor FEAG AG, Gutknecht Elektroplanung AG, Hansgrohe, Holz Stürm AG, KEIMFARBEN AG, Miele AG, Neumarkt 17 AG, Pfister PROFESSIONAL AG, riposa AG SWISS SLEEP, Preisig AG, REPOXIT AG, Sanitas Troesch AG, Schibli Elektrotechnik AG, Sika AG, SPLEISS AG, Urech Metallbau GmbH, WB Bürgin AG, wlw Bauingenieure AG

The building stands on the lower slope of Zürichberg, level with the university, in one of the inconspicuous neighborhood streets named after flowers. The simple, stuccoed homes in the neighborhood are painted in various colors and have modest facade ornamentation. Some of them have bay windows or small balconies as well as pronounced rooflines with mansards and dormers.
The apartment house on Narzissenstrasse fits into this familiar context. A projecting bay dominates the narrow face of the street facade, balconies with pergolas occupy the corners, and here too, the roof forms a mansard. The colored stucco surfaces and white windows are framed by profiled concrete elements. A narrow front garden separates the building from the street.
The house itself accommodates two apartments on each floor, with one unit facing the street and another facing the garden. What they have in common is an elongated living/dining room, which in one case runs parallel to the street and in the other juts out into the garden. As with the outward expression, the interior is also determined not by abstraction but by concrete aspects.

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