Typology+

Typology + Access

Preface

Page 7

In the Residential Building: Type, Style, ModeóAn Introduction

14

Inhabiting Paths: On Ladders, Stairs, and Galleries

20

Vertical Point Access Loft Building, Colmarerstrasse, Basel, Buchner Bründler Architekten

30

Erlimatt Residential Building, Oberägeri, Dettli Nussbaumer

32

Apartment Building, Rue de l’Ourcq, Paris, Philippe Gazeau

36

Durkheim Residential Complex, Paris, Francis Soler

40

Hoge Heren Residential High-Rise, Rotterdam, Wiel Arets

44

Rondo Apartment Building, Zurich, Graber Pulver

48

Horizontal Corridor Access Trnovski Pristan Condominium, Ljubljana, Sadar Vuga

52

The Whale Apartment House, Amsterdam, de Architekten Cie.

56

Miss Sargfabrik Residential Complex, Vienna, BKK-3, Franz Sumnitsch with Johnny Winter

62

Rigoletto Residential Complex, Munich, A2architekten

66

Fælledhaven Residential Complex, Copenhagen, Domus

70

Breitenfurterstraße, Residential Complex, Vienna, Helmut Wimmer

76

Combinations Falken Residential and Commercial Building, Baden, Burkard Meyer

80

Am Cöllenhof Apartment Building, Bonn, Uwe Schröder

84

Calle José Pérez Residential Complex, Madrid, Carlos Ferrater

88

Mirador Residential High-Rise, Madrid, MVRDV

92

Rosenstraße Residential Complex, Dornbirn, Gnaiger Mössler

96

KNSM-Eiland Housing Block, Amsterdam, H. Kollhoff and H. Timmermann with Christian Rapp

100

IJburg 23 Housing Complex, Amsterdam, VMX

106

10

Typology + Space

Page

Living Spaces

112

Orientation / Lighting / Depth Stanga Housing Complex, Rovinj, UOA Helena Paver Njiric

122

Housing Complex, Tokiostraße, Vienna, Adolf Krischanitz und Ulrich Huhs

126

Hofgarten Housing Complex, Zurich, Galli & Rudolf

130

Am Katzenbach Housing Complex, Zurich, Zita Cotti

136

Lux Housing Complex, Vienna, pool Architektur

140

Kraftwerk 1 Housing Complex, Zurich, Stücheli with Bünzli & Courvoisier

144

Werdwies Residential Complex, Zurich, Adrian Streich

148

Amsterdam 315 Housing Complex, Mexico City, JS designdevelopment

152

Neumünsterallee Housing Complex, Zurich, Gigon Guyer

156

Loft Building at Alfonso Reyes 58, Mexico City, Dellekamp

160

a

Relationship of Individual and Common Spaces Schwarzer Laubfrosch Housing Complex, Bad Waltersdorf, SPLITTERWERK

164

Estradehaus Housing Complex, Berlin, Wolfram Popp

168

Carabanchel Housing Complex, Madrid, Aranguren + Gallegos

172

Theresienhöhe Housing Complex, Munich, HildundK with Tilmann Rohnke

176

Böhnli Apartment Building, Zurich, Guignard & Saner

180

RiffRaff Apartment Building, Zurich, Meili, Peter Architekten with Staufer & Hasler Architekten

184

Apartment Building on Hohlstrasse, Zurich, Peter Märkli + Gody Kühnis

188

Housing Complex, Fukuoka, Steven Holl

192

3-D Housing Complex on Hertha-Firnberg-Straße, Vienna, Cuno Brullmann

196

Egota Apartment Building, Tokyo, Kazunari Sakamoto

200

Gifu Kitagata Housing Complex, Motosu, Kazuyo Sejima

204

Monbijou Housing Complex, Berlin, Grüntuch Ernst

208

Housing Complex on Siewerdtstrasse, Zurich, EM2N

212

Apartment Building, Teufen, Covas Hunkeler Wyss

216

Space Block Housing Complex, Hanoi Model, Kazuhiro Kojima

220

Diverse Units, Combinations Housing Complex on Leimbachstrasse, Zurich, pool Architekten

224

Gradaöka Housing Complex, Ljubljana, Sadar Vuga

230

VM Housing Complex, Copenhagen, PLOT=JDS+BIG

236

11

Typology + Exterior

Inhabiting NatureóOn the Value of Outdoor Spaces in Multistory Apartment Buildings

Page 244

Balcony Am Eulachpark Housing Complex, Winterthur, Burkhalter Sumi

254

St. Alban-Ring Housing Complex, Basel, Morger Degelo

258

Housing Complex, Montpellier, Édouard François

262

Burriweg Housing Complex, Zurich, Frank Zierau

266

Loggia Housing Complex on Susenbergstrasse, Zurich, Gigon Guyer

270

Nuovo Portello Residential Towers, Milan, Cino Zucchi

274

Stähelimatt Housing Complex, Zurich, Esch Architekten

278

Reussinsel Housing Complex, Lucerne, Andreas Rigert + Patrik Bisang

282

Glattpark Housing Complex, Opfikon, von Ballmoos Krucker

286

Terrace Housing Complex at Amsterdam 253, Mexico City, Taller 13 Arquitectos

290

Sphinxen Housing Complex, Huizen, Neutelings Riedijk Architects

294

Breevaarthoek Housing Complex, Gouda, KCAP

298

De Eekenhof Housing Complex, Enschede, Claus en Kaan Architecten

302

Two-Story Exterior Spaces Vertikalgartenhaus Housing Complex, Vienna, Geiswinkler & Geiswinkler

308

Housing Complex on 10th Avenue, Vancouver, LWPAC

312

Paul-Clairmont-Strasse Housing Complex, Zurich, Gmür & Steib

316

12

Typology + Morphology

Designing the Building Volume and the Site or the Type as Method

Page 322

Volumes House B Housing Complex, Venice, Cino Zucchi

328

Wandsworth Workshops, London, Sergison Bates

332

Housing Complex on Linzer Straße, Vienna, Atelier Seraji

336

Hollainhof Housing Complex, Ghent, Neutelings Riedijk Architects

340

Multifamily Building on Zurlindenstrasse, Zurich, Huggen Berger

346

Serra Xic Housing Complex, Barcelona, Josep Llinàs Carmona

350

Layering Mühlweg Housing Complex, Vienna, Hermann and Johannes Kaufmann

354

Tower Flower Housing Complex, Paris, Édouard François

358

Apartment Buildings on Hohenbühlstrasse, Zurich, agps.architecture

362

Prinsenhoek, Housing Complex, Sittard, Neutelings Riedijk Architects

366

Westpark Housing Complex, Frankfurt, Stefan Forster Architekten

370

Opening Mercat de Santa Caterina Housing Complex, Barcelona, Miralles Tagliabue EMBT

374

House A Housing Complex, Venice, Cino Zucchi

378

Østerbrogade Housing Complex, Copenhagen, C. F. Møller

382

Kajplats Housing Complex, Malmö, Gert Wingårdh

386

Housing Complex on Landsberger Straße, Munich, Fink + Jocher

390

Am Schwarzpark Housing Complex, Basel, Miller & Maranta

394

Index Addresses Architects / Photographers

400

Sort Criteria

410

Editors

430

13

In the Residential Building: Type, Style, Model An Introduction

14

Typologie+ 覺 Einleitung

I became aware that a house has to be understood as a type. […]

[W]hen you build a house, the client is the first occupant; perhaps twenty years later other people will live in it. When I design a house today, I start out from the rooms, without defining them more closely; they can be used in different ways, and what the occupants make of them determines what they are. Living in the rooms is part of architecture.1

— Michael Alder

The residential building viewed as a suit tailored to the subjective desires of the occupants is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of housing. The “dream house,” seen as the subconscious rendered in stone, has become the psychological profile of the client’s individuality. This concept was supported by the state subsidy of home ownership, which flourished in the second half of the twentieth century. It made the link between property and individuality a universal. It was no longer a privilege to build a house according to one’s own desires, dreams, and ideas but rather a concomitant of a social order that appealed to the concept of individuality.

The statement by Michael Alder quoted in the epigraph emphasizes that housing has to be considered from the perspective of the specific implementation, since a residential building has a significantly longer lifecycle than its first occupant and/or client. In central Europe, housing loans typically have terms of twenty to thirty years; in Japan, by contrast, as many as ninety years are granted for repayment. That alone makes it clear that the first occupant and the architect should think about creating a home for later generations, for the owner’s heirs or legal successors. With that in mind, it becomes important to think of the residential building once again as a typological phenomenon, as Alder suggests.

This has little to do, however, with a discussion that is currently enjoying something of a boom. For example, a journal article recently asked “Wohnen im Typus — Was heißt das?” 2 (Living in a type — What does that mean?). Another article examined design models such as the grid, the type, the pattern, and related planning strategies against the backdrop of the rapid development of computer power and the resulting progress in the CAD (computer-aided design) and CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) sectors. 3 This debate is remarkable precisely because the concept of the type has lost its appeal. Thus André Bideau argued in 2000: “Back then [in the 1970s], the concept of typology played a crucial role in the development of the critical and scholarly objectivity with which postmodernism reestablished the autonomy of architecture. Thanks to the traces of use and repetition left behind in the typology, ‘robust’ architecture was in a position to react selectively in its design to the challenges of its specific environment — either by means of morphological figuration or by means of applying images and symbols.

Today, however, an engagement with typology does not so much offer a dialectic for design, much less a means to resistance. At most it offers one possibility among others to modulate space.” 4 Elegant-

15

ly but also enduringly, an architectural discourse that was cultivated over decades has been composted. In the journal trans, the central theoretical organ of the ETH Zürich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, or Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Nicola Braghieri went further: “Over the last fifty years, typology has been a kind of religion in architectural theory.” 5 With a typology as creed, the cornerstone was set for an enlightened discourse. Beyond such questions of faith, however, our title, Typology+, is intended to address central problems of multistory residential buildings. For that reason, the concept of type is defined only vaguely here. Archetype, prototype, type — what interests us is the oscillation of the term, not its rigid constriction.

In preparation for this book, hundreds of contemporary residential buildings were examined and their particular qualities studied and categorized. Four aspects served as leitmotifs in that process: In the first category, we included the path to the house and the forms of internal circulation have been summed up in typological groups. The systems of access and circulation structure a residence and thus shape quite fundamentally how residents live together. Access is also the thread that links the building to the networks of the city. The systems of communication are therefore one of the essential qualities of residential architecture. Another essential quality is its outdoor spaces.

They have long since become the most important asset in the quality of housing in conurbations. The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate the distinct modes of outdoor spaces, as embodied in loggias, roof terraces, and balconies. We have deliberately focused on the private outdoor space assigned to an apartment, not the public space.

The third factor in this typological presentation is the living spaces themselves. This book hopes to show that they have been subject to a striking transformation in recent decades. On the one hand, the diversity of types has increased; on the other, they are used quite differently as a result of social change — keyword: service economy — and the increased overlapping of the workplace and the home. “Living in the rooms is part of architecture,” wrote Michael Alder. The individuality of housing is echoed in this. It demonstrates most clearly, perhaps, how typological thinking influences things. It does not by any means lead to monotony; on the contrary, it opens up a horizon of diversity.

The fourth and final category is the design of the building volume.

This chapter is a synthesis of the earlier ones and shapes their parts into a whole. A residential building “speaks” to its surroundings

16

Typologie+ ı Einleitung

through its facade; the building becomes part of the city that it shapes at the same time. The examples chosen for this chapter are intended to explore in particular the possibilities that contemporary materials and techniques offer to formulate the urban-planning context. If residential buildings can be said to form a city’s body, then their facades can be called its smiling face.

It was Rafael Moneo who recognized the formulation of new types as a creative process and hence identified the continuous evolution in typology: “When a new type emerges — when an architect is able to describe a new set of formal relations which generates a new group of buildings or elements — then that architect’s contribution has reached the level of generality and anonymity that characterizes architecture as a discipline.”6 For Moneo, a type in architecture has an identifiable author, a specific architect who develops it by creating a new principle of formal relationships, as Moneo describes it, and hence strives for an anonymity in the result that constitutes the essence of architecture.

At the same time, this anonymity makes it possible for the type to become the basis for concrete examples by other authors. Therein lies the central aspect of a genuine type: it possesses, despite its identifiable inventor, such a degree of universality and anonymity that it can be used by others — by the discipline in general. The edifice of architecture would thus be the collection of architectural types and parts of buildings whose stock can be fundamentally expanded.

Quatremère de Quincy, the inventor of the modern concept of type, also pointed to a developmental aspect: “In every country, the orderly art of building was born from a pre-existing seed. Everything must have an antecedent, nothing whatsoever comes from nothing, and this cannot but apply to all human inventions. We observe also how all inventions, in spite of subsequent changes, have conserved their elementary principle in a manner that is always visible, and always evident to feeling and reason. This elementary principle is like a sort of nucleus around which are assembled, and with which are consequently coordinated, all the developments and the variations of form to which the object was susceptible. Thus did a thousand of all sorts reach us; and in order to understand their reasons, one of the principal occupations of science and philosophy is to search for their origin and primitive cause. This is what ought to be called type in architecture as in every other area of human invention and institution.”7 The French architectural theorist elegantly navigates around

the shoal of the question how a type is constituted, since the motif of development, symbolized by the seed, is contrasted by the image of the hard, seemingly unchanging nucleus. The seed and the nucleus constitute Quincy’s pair of biological concepts that embrace the variance and constancy of the type, which reconciles its ability to transform and renew with its seemingly antithetical persistent and unchanging character. This reference to the roots of typology will have to suffice here. In the introductions to each chapter, we take up these connections and historical bridges again.

When we describe buildings or individual parts of buildings and their possibilities in this book as they are found in contemporary residential architecture, we do so, on the one hand, in a conscious effort to convey solution-oriented information that offers to all those involved in residential architecture specific opportunities and inspiration for solutions and, on the other hand, with the conviction that these types have the potential to continue to generate and transform. The typologies described here do not constitute a catalog of models or building parts. This book is not intended to be yet another building block in the wide-ranging landscape of architectural theory; rather, it is intended to provide architects with inspiration for their work and with basic research into new developments.

The design of buildings, of the outdoor spaces that surround them or are woven into them, of the systems of access and circulation, and of the spatial configurations of the apartments themselves are the typological categories according to which we have examined the architecture of multistory residential buildings; they are not exhaustive but, we hope, they offer a useful tool for the craft of residential architecture.

Notes Quoted in Martin Steinmann, “Das Haus ist meine Welt: Zum architektonischen Denken von Michael Alder,” werk, bauen und wohnen 6 (2001): 38–49, esp. 42.

2 Sabine Pollak, Maja Lorbek, and Robert Temel, “Wohnen im ­Typus,” Architektur & Bauforum 7 (2008): 1–2.

3 See the thematic focus in “Entwurfsmuster: Raster, Typus, Pattern, Script, Algorithmus, Ornament,” ARCH+ 189 (2008).

4 André Bideau, “De-Typologisierung (Editorial),” werk, bauen und wohnen 3 (2000): 8–9, esp. 9.

5 Nicola Braghieri, “Theorie und Technik in der architektonischen Planung,” in transLate (2004): 6–7, esp. 6.

6 Rafael Moneo, “On Typology,” Oppositions 13 (1978): 22–45, esp. 28.

7 Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, The True, the Fictive, and the Real: The Historical Dictionary of Architecture of Quatremère de Quincy, trans. Samir Younés (London: Andreas Papadakis, 1999), 255., quoted in part in Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, trans. Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), 40.

1

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BKK-3, Miss Sargfabrik Schema M 1:1000

de Architekten Cie, The Whale

Schema M1:1000

Ferrater_schema, M 1:1000

MVRDV, MIRADOR, M 1:1000, SCHEMA (19.OG)

Wiel Arts, Tower Hoge Heren Rotterdam, M 1:200, Schema Erschliessung + Freie Flächen

18

Erschließung ı Intro

VMX, Erschliessung Turm, M 1_1000

Schema Erschliessung M 1_1000

Access +

19

Inhabiting Paths: On Ladders, Stairs, and Galleries

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father ...

— Jacob’s dream, Genesis 28:12–13

Before the profane words “access” and “circulation” entered the vocabulary of architects, stairs, stairwells, lobbies, and galleries were spaces that also symbolized stepping over boundaries and reaching higher levels. It might seem presumptuous, and meaningless as well, to call to mind the religious, spiritual, and even occult qualities of steps and ladders. For William Blake, one of the great mystics in the history of art, Jacob’s Ladder, which connected the worldly to the heavenly, was closed related to the anatomy of the human ear, whose auditory canal he described as an endlessly twisting spiral ascent to the Heaven of Heavens.1 He saw the opening of the inner ear in turn as the precondition for making contact with higher worlds.

The stairway — in its most original form: chopped out of a single tree trunk — symbolizes the connection of heaven and earth in yet another way. Its zigzag line is found as a symbol both in primitive cultures and in Neolithic Bandkeramik. This line is an emblem for lightning, which connects heaven and earth in a violent discharge.

The violence it contains has always been a sign of (the anger of) God, and it is an attribute of the supreme divinity: Zeus/Jupiter among the Greeks and Romans and Donar/Thor among the Germanic gods. The destructive lightning is followed by redemptive/ fertile rain, with the rainbow as the sign of the renewed covenant between God and man.

The kivas of the Hopi Indians have such steps carved from a single tree, leading to the communal rooms for religious ceremonies. The important art and cultural historian Aby Warburg referred to these connections and demonstrated them with material he had collected on his trip to Hopi reservations in the late nineteenth century. The exceptional significance that stairwells had is also evident from the great castles from the Gothic era by way of the Baroque to the architecture of the museums, theaters, and opera houses with which the bourgeoisie asserted its rise. The splendid architecture of the Château de Chambord is organized around its grand staircase. The double-helix staircase is emphasized in the view from outside by means of an imaginative lantern structure on the roof terrace. We need only allude to magnificent Baroque stairs, like those of Würzburg Castle. Such allusions may seem out of place in the context of a typological depiction of forms of access in modern architecture.

But can these aspects of stairs and stairwells simply be brushed aside? For reasons of cost savings, the paths to apartments in a residential building are kept as short as possible, until nothing is

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1

2

left but a functional remnant that compels users to get through this space as quickly as possible. But hasn’t the elimination of everything that goes beyond the purely physical overcoming of a difference in height led to us experiencing a continuous impoverishment of these communicative spaces? “Within the context of multi-story residential construction, this means that the residents’ outdoors ­i nteraction areas are, as a rule, restricted entirely to streets, walkways, and parking places. … In the interiors of buildings, inter­a ction areas among apartments are likewise generally reduced to the minimum degree necessary, in stairwells and corridors. Floor space is typically dedicated to achieve a maximum of pure dwelling-unit floor space.” 2 Sociologists recognized this problem early on and as early as the 1960s — Jane Jacobs, for example — recommended spaces of access and circulation that could serve as a place for social interaction.

The “sociologizing” of architecture during the decades that followed produced an entire apparatus of theorems and criteria intended as a way of looking exterior spaces and areas for access and circulation in an integrated way, in the context of surroundings as well as of the city as a whole. Scholars of (the architecture of) housing went so far as to assign certain “types of living” to particular “types of housing” and to define not only access and circulation within an apartment building as a parameter but also how it is opened up or closed off.3 Supposedly, “such residential dwellings, with a high degree of seclusion, naturally appeal to the introverted kind of resident. These kinds of residents primarily consist of singles who work at home, reserved couples without children, and retired men and women.” 4 The open apartment is suited to the needs of “a ‘normal’ resident,” including those “who are closely bound to their living area by their dependency (for example, children), by their activities (say, housewives), or by their physical condition (such as old people).” 5 Hence senior citizens who are considering a closed type of apartment have to be sprightly, while the elderly for whom the open type is suited are more fragile — that is, if these two quotations do not represent a fundamental contradiction. Be that as it may, it is clear that sociology opened up a broad field for projections and attempted to justify them scientifically. However, the dilemma goes much deeper.

The laudable effort to attribute social value to areas for access and circulation and the planned “socialization” of common areas merely scratches the surface of the problem. For we have long since internalized the idea that a stately staircase in a contemporary residential

3

building is a contradiction in terms. Why should a place where people are not supposed to linger be enhanced by aesthetic means? The Enlightenment probably marks the beginning of first questioning and then eliminating everything that does not serve a rationally defined purpose. And it is no coincidence that it was the architects and architectural theorists of the revolutionary age who first thought systematically about the most economical forms of access and circulation. They were presumably the first to concern themselves with the new social conflicts — conflicts that have established the rhythm of history since the French Revolution. The structuring of contexts becomes a crucial theme for two aspects: structures that provide access to more than one unit per floor are considerably more costeffective. Minimizing the costs for stairwells, corridors, and elevators is one of the crucial themes for the architecture of multistory residential buildings. This economics of privation characterized the large-scale residential buildings of the twentieth century. The idea of designing the access and circulation areas for this new architectural task to be communal spaces was established in reformist social housing projects like the Familistère Godin in the nineteenth century and, to single out one significant example, the Spangen housing complex in Rotterdam in the twentieth.

One consequence of the push to economize was that people moved closer together, so that communities had to be formed and entirely new parameters emerged. Although housing had always been a problem for society — no matter whether in the Paleolithic era, in ancient Rome, or in overfilled medieval cities with their alleys and ghettos — it first became an autonomous task on which people reflected systematically and developed solutions during the Industrial Revolution, when the goal was to house the proletarian masses.

From the outset, fear of the political volatility of the masses was a consideration in the design of apartments for workers or for families. It is no surprise, therefore, that little interest was shown — and not just for economic reasons — in generous spaces for lingering outside of the housing units. The questions what these new communities that would necessarily emerge there might look like, by what parameters they could be defined (class, culture, nation, and so on) did not simply parallel modern society; they shaped it quite fundamentally. Especially after the Second World War, the reconstruction within an economy plagued by shortages could justify the reduction of circulation areas with new arguments, and that was reflected in how they looked: “Facing north, lit by small windows, planned

4

5

with a standard rise and minimum width, under the influence of bibles of standardization like Ernst Neufert’s Bauentwurfslehre (translated as Architects’ Data) they atrophied into wallflowers.” 6 The difficult part is structuring the communal in residential architecture. How the residents of a housing complex — people who, as a rule, do not know one another before moving in (and when they do, perhaps discover only later how different they are) — come together, form a community, and live as individuals is something that every generation has to invent anew. The following examples are positive approaches influenced by this set of problems. Typological analysis offers a system that shows a planner the possibilities a certain type of access offers, what it cannot offer, which milieus can adapt to it, and which cannot. It offers only such possibilities,

Fig. 1. Philipp Otto Runge, Perspectival construction of a spiral staircase. From: Alexander Roob, The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy and Mysticism, trans. Shaun Whiteside (Cologne: Taschen, 1997), 296. Credit: Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence Fig. 2. William Blake, Jacob’s Ladder, ca. 1800. From: Alexander Roob, The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy and Mysticism, trans.

Shaun Whiteside (Cologne: Taschen, 1997), 297.

Fig. 3. Rabbi Löw in his alchemy workshop with a spiral staircase in the form of a human ear. Still from Paul Wegener’s Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920); stage set: Hans Poelzig. Photo: Deutsches Filminstitut Fig. 4. Pueblos with ladders. Photo: Aby Warburg. Credit: Max Hollein and Pamela Kort, eds., I Like America: Fictions of the Wild West, exh. cat., Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (Munich: Prestel, 2007), fig. 161; Warburg Institute Archive, London Fig. 5. Large staircase of the Château de Chambord, ca. 1530, Photo: Georg Kaufmann, Die Kunst des 16. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Propyläen; special edition Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein Verlag, 1990), fig. 373. Credit: Jean Roubier, Paris

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6

never absolute certainties. Architecture has a scientific component, but beyond that it is an art, which every time, for every project, lies in applying findings that have been partially established to a particular program and site.

A warning is appropriate here: there is no automatism in architecture. Certain forms of access — an external gallery, for example — can make it easier to form communities, but that is not necessarily the case. Too many other factors play a role: the gallery’s width, its situation in relation to the exterior, its orientation, and the number of floors. It has to be considered, along with many other aspects, when deciding on an architectural structure, but that alone will not determine the community of a complex, as is clear if we think of the social parameters. Many admirable, politically committed, and revolutionary projects have failed because of an irresponsible policy that did not care a whit who was “admitted” to a complex and under what conditions. Examples of such failure are by no means rare, and the world of architecture certainly does not lack polemicists who would like to make their name by wittily dismissing such models. As scholars, we are more cautious here. The point is to show the possibilities, not to comment ironically on them. That new challenges, such as barrier-free construction, might lead — as has, not without reason, been speculated — to further atrophying of the stairs and corridors in buildings can only be avoided with creative solutions that prove the contrary.7 “Einspänner” …

In Austria, at least, an Einspänner is a type of coffee, consisting of a Verlängerter — a coffee made with additional water, known as a caffè lungo in Italian and a café allongé in French — topped with whipped cream and served in a cup rather than a glass. This has nothing to do with residential architecture, however, which also has Zweispänner, Dreispänner, and Mehrspänner, which refers to buildings where two, three, or more units are accessed from a single stairwell. What the joys of coffee do, however, share with these types of access is an extravagant note: the Einspänner, in which each apartment occupies an entire floor, is the deluxe version of the residential building, if you will. The Swiss architect Alfred Roth employed this type for a multifamily apartment house in Zurich in 1936, and in doing so precisely defined its possibilities. In the mid-1930s he was designing what is now known as an “urban villa.” It has little in common with the late-nineteenth-century villa or with the ur-villas Palladio and their descendents in the United Kingdom and the Unit-

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Erschließung ı Wege bewohnen – von Leitern, Spännern und Laubengängen

7

ed States. In terms of size, Roth’s three-story multifamily residential buildings can certainly be compared to the bourgeois villas of the late nineteenth century, but they were no longer occupied as a whole by industrialists and their servants but by one family on each floor.

This structure was a reaction not only to changes in social relationships but also to urban-planning structures, since, at the time they were built, Roth’s houses were located in a garden-city-like neighborhood. This type of Einspänner — which came to enjoy great success, and not merely in architectural magazines, under the label Etagenvilla (villa flat) — can be said to be a special case of apartment building, though one that still has a great future, since it can be built on individual lots by small-scale building companies. The Spanish architects Luís Peña Ganchegui and Juan Manuel Encio Cortázar created a remarkable special case of the single-access-point apartment in 1958: the Vista Alegre — or “cheerful view” — apartment tower. They wanted to retain as much as possible of the small, treecovered park that was the building’s site, so they stacked the apartments to form a slender tower.

Putting the principle of a space-saving construction above all other parameters, they decided to place three triplex units one above the other. On the first level of each apartment is a living room, on the second a bedroom, and on the third the ancillary rooms. To emphasize even more terraced effect, they staggered the living spaces by half a floor, as is evident from a view of the tower, translating the structure of the house into a graphic form.8 It is, perhaps, no coincidence that the apartment with one unit per floor is currently being reinvented in Switzerland and being made a touch more extravagant by all sorts of ingenious details. The loft apartments of Buchner und Bründler in Basel have, after Roth’s precursor of the 1930s, returned to the closed urban ground plan. They inserted precisely into a vacant space in the existing perimeter block development a six-story apartment building, which clearly looms above the adjacent properties.

Whereas Roth placed his stairwell in a corner, so that it can receive direct light, Buchner und Bründler dispensed with this arrangement, because of the site of their building, placing the stairwell instead in the core of the building. The apartments wind around this stabilizing pole; the floor plans are open; and the house opens up onto the street and the rear courtyard through large windows between the two side walls. The Spartan look of the interior presumes an urbane audience with similar architectural tastes. The stairwell has lost its overriding significance; it is needed when the elevator fails and, of course, as

8

an escape route in case of fire. The stairwell is no longer intended as a place to meet others. Well-situated urban dwellers celebrate their apartments as the focus of the lives with lifestyle possessions, but they are neither dependent on this place nor members of a tenement house community whose fates are linked.

Building Community: Multiunit Floors and Courtyards The properties described above are solitary objects, so to speak, not only in the architectural sense, since they are based on an open plan, but also in a metaphorical sense, since they are singular cells in a row.

The stacked apartments are separated; every floor is ready for one apartment; a great deal of individuality is their trademark. The communal aspect is limited. The common spaces are reduced to a calculated minimum. The precisely arranged residential building on Susenbergstrasse in Zurich by Gigon / Guyer features aspects with Roth’s type as well as others with that of Buchner und Bründler. Their housing complex consists of three four-story cuboids, which are connected below ground by a parking garage and on ground level by a plaza and paths. As in Buchner und Bründler’s building, the parking garage is accessed by elevator directly from the individual apartments, with no detour. This strict anonymity is contrasted with the carefully worked-out system of paths that brackets the buildings on the ground floor and offers a picture of a functioning residential community.

This approach to forming an ensemble of solitary objects is taken further in the Erlimatt/Oberägeri housing complex by Dettli Nussbaumer. These are larger properties, which taken together form something like a village. With their large, low gable roofs, they allude to traditional architectural forms and have a certain “retro” character. They inevitably recall the 1970s, when architects responded to the urbanization of rural areas with such typologies. Large glass surfaces, wonderful terraces and loggias, and slightly staggered floors not only create a diversity of life indoors but also subtly adapt to the terrain, which slopes slightly down to the Lake Ägeri. Morger/Degelo play perfectly not only with the historical narrative levels but also with the repertoire of High Modernism. They provide access to the two apartments on each floor via small courtyards. The courtyards, which are more than simply atriums, also make it possible to light and ventilate the very deep, almost square buildings very well on all sides. It seems only logical that, as urban sprawl continues, such approaches are being used to augment the modernist repertoire.

Access via a courtyard is not a feature exclusive to properties based

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on a central plan. The apartment building at Parral 67 by Jacobo Micha Mizrahi, in the urban context of Mexico City, consists of two symmetrical volumes separated by a courtyard in the center.

The four-story building is accessed by a light metal stair construction placed in this courtyard. The result is a variant on the type based on two units per floor, which, because the platforms that provide access to the apartments are very wide, is more like the coupling of two volumes in which each of the units occupies an entire floor. The charm of this courtyard derives from its apt scale of proximity and distance, of depth and height. Nor should one forget that it both thrives on the intense solar radiation of the Mexican metropolis and reacts to it. The dimensions of such a courtyard can certainly not be transferred to completely different latitudes (and altitudes). This courtyard needs this distance: if it were built wider, it would lose its tension; if it were narrower, it would result in an unpleasant proximity. Comparing this solution to the “lofts” in Basel by Buchner und Bründler, which respond to a similar urban structure, the fundamental differences become evident and the value of typological thinking and planning obvious. Access via courtyards, which can be partially covered or entirely open, designed as a plaza or as a path, is one possible approach to viewing access as a communicative whole.

Fig. 6. Luís Peña Ganchegui and Juan Manuel Encio Cortázar, Vista Alegre tower apartments, 1958. Photo: Carlos Flores and Xavier Güell, Arquitectura de España / Architecture of Spain, 1929–1996 (Barcelona: Fundación Caja de Arquitectos, 1996), 270.

Fig. 7. Buchner Bründler, Loft house on Colmarerstrasse, Basel. Photo: Ruedi Walti, Basel Fig. 8. Susenbergstrasse housing colony, Zurich. Photo: Heinrich Helfenstein, Zurich Figs. 9, 10. Dettli Nussbaumer, Erlimatt housing colony, Oberägeri.

Photo: Hannes Henz, Zurich

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This kind of access creates wide spaces, which, however, require a generous scale as well as room, and hence they are not necessarily the best solution, especially in urban locations. The necessity to provide access to several units on each floor is as old as urban housing itself.

The smallest and thus most intimate way of forming groups is to provide access to two units on each floor. The designs of this dual type can vary tremendously, as we will demonstrate here with just a few examples. The multistory apartments of the Onkel Toms Hütte (Uncle Tom’s cabin) forest housing colony by Bruno Taut, Hugo Häring, and Otto R. Salvisberg, dating from the mid-1920s onward, demonstrate the quality of this type of access. It is very economical, without placing too much emphasis on that; it provides a unit opposite on every level, and hence a kind of natural neighbor. The three stories of many of the buildings in this colony thus unite six parts into one group by means of a single entryway.

The puritanical severity we find in this housing tract is not, however, inherent to the type. The architects Duinker & van der Torre have interpreted this two-unit-per-floor type in a very different way and thus demonstrated the range of this approach. With their Uithoorn housing complex, they succeeded in conveying a certain sense of spatial luxury — for example, by means of the breathing space in the hall on the third floor. Martin Spühler, David Munz, and Bruno Senn deliberately placed pairs of facing units — that is, the dialogue of neighbors — within the overall architectonic form in a way that creates a tension. This multistory building thus unites an urban dimension with an almost villagelike ensemble of small parts. Because the apartments are accessed via terracelike open spaces, however, this project also introduces a certain distance.

Whereas in the housing colony in the Berlin forest the pairs of units are very close together, Spühler & Co. sweep air across the platforms and thus relativize any possible cramped effect within the considerable dimensions of this building. Francis Soler’s urban interpretation of this type takes it a step further. He shows its limits but in doing so also his extraordinary creativity. As in our Zurich example, the units in Soler’s apartment building, located not far from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, are also accessed via a platform. By docking pairs of apartments, he doubles the number of units that can be accessed via these decks. Soler thus creates a “pseudo” four-units-perfloor model, which also has disadvantages. Whereas the Swiss example has units that receive light from two sides, Soler cannot achieve this. Édouard François has demonstrated the possibility of providing access via external platforms that also serve as terraces. Between

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Erschließung ı Wege bewohnen – von Leitern, Spännern und Laubengängen

12

three volumes of three floors arranged diagonally to one another, he placed two trapezoidal “frames,” from which three units on each floor are accessed. The spaciousness of these planes provides distance, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, enough room for the residents to make these outdoor areas as their own.

More Horses Pulling the Plow The types of access and circulation discussed thus far still offer relatively modest advantages in terms of economic efficiency. The trend to having not just two or three but rather four, five, or more apartments accessed from each level has resulted in its own economy of pleasure of design: the more units that can be accessed from one level, the better the ratio of net to gross floor space in the building. Not infrequently, the result is an almost picturesque aesthetic of the floor plans, as Hans Scharoun’s Romeo and Julia (Juliet) buildings in Stuttgart confirm. In the Romeo high-rise, an L-shaped corridor provides access to no fewer than six units. Because the possibilities for floor plans based on rectangles are quickly exhausted, “organic” forms are often brought into play — cloverleaf buildings like Émile Aillaud’s residential building in La Défense (1975) — or organic, expressive ones like Scharoun’s. Despite this attractive organic aesthetic, such buildings cannot help but offer living conditions that tend to anonymity, such as often poorly lit corridors.

The isolation of the residents in a ten-story building may have its charms under certain circumstances. Everything we know about residential architecture today suggests that such forms contribute significantly to making people feel alone. The hotel-like character that such properties have under the best circumstances is, as we have noted, not without its charms, leaving aside the question whether that should be a goal of residential architecture. Such extreme forms, which have emphatically formalist qualities, have hardly been used at all in recent years. Because the pressure to build cost-effectively has not diminished, however, there are interesting examples that seek out acceptable compromises between purely economic considerations and a reasonable neighborliness. For their residential high-rise in Amsterdam in 1998, Duinker and van der Torre created an attractive type featuring a kind of access loggia. It has three units per floor, in a form not unlike Scharoun’s Julia high-rise, and the balconies of the apartments, all of which face south, rise up into the surroundings at acute angles. In his housing complex in Berlin’s Hansaviertel in 1955–57, Aalvar Alto also tackled the issue of providing access to as many apartments as possible by means of a horizontal, plazalike

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space. The corridor is widened to become a real hall. With five units per floor accessed via an open colonnade, it resembles a covered piazza. Such access halls have a lot of potential, especially in an urban context. Uwe Schröder’s building at the Cöllenhof in Bonn plays with this theme on a smaller scale, and no longer as drily organized but instead featuring many distinct small parts. He joined the access paths crosswise across an open courtyard, leading through a columned portico and then separating out the paths to the individual apartments via a tall stairwell.

Excursus: External Galleries The external gallery has been subject to quite antithetical assessments in discussions of residential architecture. Despite objectively evident disadvantages, this type has repeatedly been promoted, especially by those seeking to reform residential architecture, as a tried-and-tested method to solve the problems of public housing. Its disadvantages, as described in the literature, have led to its rejection in many quarters and for long periods. There have been phases in the history of residential architecture when it was scarcely employed at all and others in which it seemed to have been rescued from oblivion, as it were, by ideologically colored arguments. Our presentation of the external gallery seeks first and foremost to make distinctions and to examine critically both poles of this debate. The external gallery is not as bad as some theorists of residential architecture assert, but neither is an instrument to solve society’s problems. On the contrary, if an architectural element is it forced to do the latter, the result can only be disappointment. This section should thus be understood as a double disappointment. Behind its focus on the external gallery stands a search for ways to design multistory residential buildings as attractive social frameworks. Of all the corridor systems for providing access to separate units, galleries appear to offer the greatest potential for a social dimension. All of the other systems in which many units are accessed from a single point lack its breadth and openness — and that is all the more true of designs with just one or two units per floor. The stairwells they necessitate often become unlit dark zones and a source of anxiety within the housing complex. Hence this section will examine a wide variety of systems of access via a gallery not only from aesthetic points of view but also with an eye to their effectiveness as a place of social interaction. The gallery is a very economical system but also a very old system of access and circulation, whose use has by no means been restricted to residential architecture but already in antiquity was employed whenever it was necessary to

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circulate large numbers of people along protected paths. The Colosseum in Rome, which has served as the model for the design and construction of large sports stadiums right up to the present, is mentioned here as one representative of a whole class of architectural tasks. In his Trattato di architettura, Antonio Averlino — better known by his pseudonym, Filarete — dreamt up types of buildings for his ideal city, Sforzinda, such as the multistory House of Vice and Virtue, whose arcades should probably be read as galleries. Filarete probably had knowledge of the design of Oriental hospitals, which had been passed on by the Knights Hospitaller in Rhodes, for example. The gallery is common as a form of access for hospitals and poorhouses in particular. One of the finest examples of such medieval institutions is the Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune, which had been founded by the famous Chancellor Nicolas Rolin. It was built between 1443 and 1451 based on plans by Jean Rateau and consists of three wings around an interior courtyard. The large hall in the southern wing was used both to care for the sick and for religious services. The northern wing (see picture) has a gallery, which on the upper floor served as a covered corridor providing access to the single rooms of the wealthy patients, which were located here, while the Chambres des pauvres were in the southern wing.

Fig. 11. Bruno Taut, Hugo Häring, and Otto R. Salvisberg, Onkel Toms Hütte housing colony Fig. 12. Francis Soler, Durkheim housing complex, Paris. Photo: Nicolas Borel, Paris Fig. 13. Hans Scharoun, Romeo and Julia, Stuttgart Fig. 14. Aalvar Alto, residential complex, Hansaviertel, Berlin, 1955–57 Fig. 15. Uwe Schröder, Am Cöllenhof apartment building, Bonn.

Photo: Peter Oszwald, Bonn

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Access + Vertical Point Access Access: Entrance hall connects the street side with the courtyard side: vertical point access, one unit per floor; inside stairwell; area around the elevator provides direct access to the apartments; stairwell lit by skylight.

Interior space: With the exception of the ground floor, each of the apartments occupies an entire floor.

A compact, vertical access core, shifted from the axial center of the ground plan, houses the stairwell, the wet cells, and the freight elevator. Because of this central access, each floor consists of a single, continuous large room, which can be partitioned with flexible elements to suit individual requirements. Full-height windows along the facades, both toward the street and the courtyard, create an open, urban atmosphere with the characteristics of a loft.

Exterior space: Balconies attached to oriel elements and recessed into the volume, roof terrace, private gardens on the ground floor (front garden), and common area in the courtyard.

Morphology: The volume aligns seamlessly with the row of buildings, which is slightly recessed from the street, and its solid walls establish a clearly defined zone for the front garden as well as a closed-off courtyard space. The allglass facades facing the street and the courtyard have parapet walls of green glass that articulates the floors horizontally. Baywindow-like projections enable residents to step into the space above the street and also create a volume with distant panoramalike views.

Schnitt M 1_500

Sample apartment, 1:200

herausgelรถste Wohnung M 1_200 Plan of site, 1:1,000

Cross sections Top floor Standard floor Ground floor 1:500

Dachgeschoss M 1_500

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Erdgeschoss M 1_500 Lageplan M 1_1000

Loft Building, Colmarerstrasse, Basel Building volumes: Perimeter block construction; front garden and courtyard areas; north–south orientation; 6 floors above ground and 1 below ground; first floor raised above ground level; depth: 11 m.

Buchner Bründler Architekten

Site: Colmarerstrasse 64, 4055 Basel, Switzerland

Apartments: 7 units Key: 5 units of 160 sq m, 2 units of 60 sq m

Client: Buchner Bründler AG Architekten BSA Completed: 2002

Additional features: None

Schema Erschliessung M 1_1000

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Access + Vertical Point Access Access: Access patio at the center of the tower; point access, two units per floor; stairwell located on the perimeter; each apartment has its own entrance facing the courtyard.

G Sample apartment, 1:200 Plan of site, 1:2,000

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Interior space: Tower buildings are inserted into the terrain in such a way that horizontal and vertical shifts provide optimal views out of the apartments into the Ă„geri Valley landscape.

The individual units have, in keeping with the slightly sloping terrain, a split-level effect between the living and sleeping areas.

After passing through the entry, a continuum develops from the living room, dining room, and the kitchen, which features a view of the lake, that contrasts with the cell-like organization of the sleeping area around a space with plank floors. The terraces run all the way around the building in order to provide direct access to outdoor space from each of the rooms.

Exterior space: Balconies / terraces run continuously around the building; in the corners, the outdoor spaces extend into the depth of the building; private gardens on the ground floor.

Morphology: In contrast to the massive perforated facade of exposed concrete facing the courtyards, the floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides and glass parapet elements determine the outward appearance. The splitlevel effect of living and sleeping areas is brought out by the horizontally articulated facade and, on the top floor, by a slightly sloping, asymmetrical roof.

Erlimatt Residential Building, Ober채geri Building volumes: Ensemble of 6 tower buildings with patio on the hillside, 2 floors above ground and 2 below, basement and parking garage, depth: ca. 20 m.

Dettli Nussbaumer

Site: Schneitstrasse, Ober채geri, Switzerland

Apartments: 33 units of 2.5 to 8.5 rooms

Client: Werk 2 AG Completed in 2005

Additional features: Common room

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Top floor Ground floor Basement Cross sections Longitudinal section 1:500

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Erschließung Spänner ı Wohnbebauung Erlimatt in Oberägeri ı Dettli Nussbaumer

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Access + Vertical Point Access Access: Ground floor with passage between the street and courtyard areas. Stairs connect various large access plateaus outdoors.

Interior space: This extremely deep lot is divided lengthwise into three parallel strips. The apartments are located on both sides of a kind of open passageway, which projects freely over the courtyard as an access deck on all floors and forms a transition between private and public space. The units and maisonettes, most of which are small, receive natural light from three or four sides and relate to the exterior space in different ways.

Exterior space: Loggias, access decks with features to enhance their attractiveness as public spaces, roof terraces.

Wohnung Typical apartment, 1:200 Site plan, 1:2,000

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Morphology: The open view of the street makes the depth of the lot evident. On the street side, two tall building volumes that recede behind the line of the facade surround an opening into which the open access levels have been inserted, with exterior stairs leading from floor to floor. Full-height windows and aluminum sliding shutters stand out against the dark clinker facade and give it an austere order. On the courtyard side, the structure is a free composition of standing, lying, and projecting volumes.

Apartment Building, Rue de l’Ourcq, Paris Building volumes: Perimeter block construction with rear courtyard, 8 floors above and 2 below ground for parking garage, depth up to ca.

40 m.

Philippe Gazeau

Site: 46, rue de l’Ourcq, 19th arrondissement, Paris, France

Apartments: 26 units, 1–3 rooms of various sizes, maisonette apartments

Client: SA HLM Toit et joie Completed: 1993

Additional features: Food services on ground floor

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Erschließung Spänner ı Wohnhaus Rue de l´Ourcq in Paris ı Philippe Gazeau

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Access + Vertical Point Access Access: Lobbies connect the street side to the courtyard side; vertical point access, four units per floor; stairwell located in the interior; natural light in the stairwells through the windows of the loggia openings.

Interior space: The rational and extremely economic structure of this vertical-point-access building with four units per floor is developed along its longitudinal axis. All of the vertical supply lines and the main load-bearing elements are bundled on that axis, so that the only supporting structures required on the facades are rows of slender supports. Most of the apartments, with the exception of the corner units and the large apartments, are oriented to just one side, as a result of the structure. The living and sleeping spaces are arranged along a corridor on the longitudinal axis. Two of the units on each floor have an additional living space in the form of a deep loggia — exterior space that supplements the French balconies.

Typical apartment, 1:200 Site plan, 1:5,000

M 1:5000 40

Exterior space: Loggia openings cut deep into the building volume from both sides and provide natural light for the stairwell; narrow balustrade space running around the building in the form of a French balcony; communal roof terrace.

Morphology: This I-shaped building volume is staggered, rising from eight to ten floors, and visually connects with the neighboring library to form an ensemble. The building has windows on all sides and has deep cuts, which divides the volume into three zones. The slightly projecting ceilings of each floor are designed as French balconies. The most striking detail of this austerely structured building is its silk-screen windows, which are intended to serve as privacy screens for residents.

Durkheim Residential Complex, Paris Building volumes: Angled slab of a perimeter block construction with southwest–northeast orientation, staggered up to 10 floors with 3 underground levels with parking garage, depth: 15 m.

Site: ZAC de Tolbiac, rue Emile Durkheim, 13th arrondissement, Paris, France Client: Régie Immobilière de la Ville de Paris Completed: 1997

Francis Soler Apartments: 94 units Additional features: Nursery, stores, and food services on ground floor

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Erschließung Spänner ı Wohnbebauung Durkheim in Paris ı Francis Soler

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Access + Vertical Point Access Access: Entrance hall on ground floor; parking on bottom six floors; vertical point access, five units per floor; interior stairwell; lobby on seventh floor with additional functions.

Interior space: The apartments are divided into day and night areas. The generous living/dining room is — except in the middle apartment—located at the corner of the building and faces two sides. This maximizing of living space contrasts with the minimizing of the floor area of the inner rooms that serve it. Access to the apartments is via a combination of corridors and halls. The loggia areas line the day and night areas.

Exterior space: Loggia, adjacent to the living room, kitchen, and bedroom lobby floor with communal outdoor space.

Wiel Arts, Tower Hoge Heren Rotterdam, M 1:200, Freie Wohnung

Typical apartment, 1:200 Site plan, 1:5,000

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Wiel Arets

Lageplan M 1:5000

Tower Heren Rotterdam

Morphology: This pair of high-rises, sharing a continuous base on the lower six floors, is situated as a landmark on the edge of the water in the center of Rotterdam. The massiveness of the slightly terraced, stone volumes of the black-stained concrete elements is countered by the glass based on the ground floor. An alternation of single-wing windows and bandlike openings of the panorama windows and loggias lend rhythm to the vertically stacked floors.

Hoge Heren Residential High-Rise, Rotterdam Building volumes: Double high-rise, 29 floors with connecting six-story base; first floor raised above ground level; depth: ca. 30 m.

Site: Gedempte Zalmhaven, 3011 BT Rotterdam, Netherlands Client: ABP, Vesteda Completed: 2001

Wiel Arets

Apartments: 285 units, 5 penthouses Additional features: CafÊ, swimming pool with sauna and fitness center Wiel Arts, Tower Hoge Heren Rotterdam, M 1:200, Schema Erschliessung + Freie Flächen

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Wiel Arts, Tower Hoge Heren Rotterdam, M 1:500, GR Appartments

Wiel Arts, Tower Hoge Heren Rotterdam, M 1:500, GR Lobby

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Erschließung Spänner ı Wohnhochhaus Hoge Heren in Rotterdam ı Wiel Arets

Wiel Arts, Tower Hoge Heren Rotterdam, M 1:500, GR Entree

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Access + Vertical Point Access Access: Access hall with freely developed stairs, located in the interior; hall lit by skylights. The arrangement of the stairs gives the building a strong identity in the interior.

Typical apartment, 1:200 Site plan, 1:5,000

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Interior space: All of the units are arranged diagonally and have both closed rooms and open living areas. Interestingly, the glazed entrance establishes a connection between the apartment and the stately stairwell, and the adjacent placement of the open kitchen makes it a kind of hinge between the entrance and the living room.

Exterior space: Continuous balconies around the volume; in front of the living rooms they project out like bays; sun shading with metal curtain.

Morphology: The irregular pentagonal geometry of the building derived from the form of the lot in order to optimize its use. In contrast to the sculpturally shaped interior, the translucent web of chrome-nickel steel determines the outward appearance of the building with its curving, baylike balconies.

Rondo Apartment Building, Zurich Building volumes: Solitary tower, 5 floors above ground and 1 below with a parking garage; depth: up to 35 m.

Graber Pulver

Site: Zurich, Switzerland

Apartments: 22 units of various sizes

Client: Rondo-Bau GmbH, Kloten Completed: 2007

Additional features: None

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Cross sections Top floor Standard floor Ground floor 1:500

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Erschließung Spänner ı Wohnhaus Rondo in Zürich ı Graber Pulver

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