Architect's and artist's apartment house at the foot of the Üetliberg by andreas fuhrimann, gabrielle hächler architects eth/bsa

The task was to create reasonably-priced residential space with high standards of living comfort for four differently sized parties. In the processs, each party was to profit as much as possible on the one hand from the 3,000 m2 south-facing environs, and on the other from the north-facing view of the city. This determined an unconventional and complex internal organisation of the building. All four apartments are accessible via a two-storey entrance hall, each of them having their own internal staircase of one or two floors. In principle the double-storey apartments and the two roof apartments are encapsulated in each other so that the quality of the four-sided building is fully exploited. Common place and unrefined materials such as concrete, timber, wood and glvanised steel were chosen, which animated each other when combined. The precise insertion of coloured kitchens with reflective glass surfacing and the extensive coloured glass panelling of the bathroom walls contrast with the the coarse concrete and the organic patterns of the wood. The basement, the vertical stairwells and the partitioning walls between the apartment units are made of concrete cast in situ (basic shuttering). This guarentees that the fire proofing and acoustic demands set by the timber elements, which constitute most of the rest of the spatial structure, are met. The concrete core constitutes the "skeleton" of the actual wooden structure, the organic softness of which heightens the rawness of the concrete. The ceilings and the walls are made of prefabricated, isolated wooden elements of spruce. The interior surfaces consist of boxing plywood on the walls and bonded boarding on the ceilings. The construction and the dileneation of the rooms are congruous. The individual building elements and the building processes are legible. Due to their slightly polygonal geometry, the wooden elements have the characteristics of a piece of carpenter's furniture. The most striking characteristic of the galvanised sheet-metal façade is the differentiation of the form of the window openings on the north and south sides.

Source : andreas fuhrimann, gabrielle hächler architects eth/bsa