Neudorfstrasse Housing, Wädenswil

On the one side the panorama over Lake Zurich, on the other the sun – the two poles typical for locations on the southern shores of the lake, which on this site are geologically accentuated by an elongated rocky ridge running just beneath the terrain. This ridge acts as an obstacle in the long hillside slope, creating a level area to the south and an all-the-more rugged incline to the north. The new building above it becomes a built ridge, cleft by the outward and inward motion of the architectural volume. At the most slender points in this cliff formation, ravine-like accesses open up in the base.

At these «midriffs» in the architectural volume the dual-sidedness of the site becomes especially and vividly apparent in the apartment floors above. Typologically the building is formed by joining four triangular segments, arranged in a triple span. The plastic implementation ensures that each apartment is orientated towards two or even three sides. Whilst the two apartments at the junctions between the segments complementarily interlock with each other, the third, outermost apartment «grasps» far out into the open.

The shared areas in each apartment are paired to form a sequence of spaces that are embedded in the «body» of the individual rooms.