On a trip to Zurich, Switzerland, I scouted some apartment buildings to share on . Given the cost of land and living in the city, most of the housing is multifamily. The three apartment buildings showcased here have many similar characteristics, but each is quite different.
One is covered in wood, another one is mainly glass and the final is nearly completely concrete. Each building is within walking distance of, among other items, the main train station and the lake; the latter is a particularly popular spot for swimming in summer.
John Hill
Wood
The Lindenrinde (“Linden Bark”) apartment building, designed by Ken Architekten, features eight apartments on four floors. It’s tucked into the middle of a large block with a few mature trees. The building takes its name from a large linden tree next to the building.
John Hill
The vertical pinstriping of this building picks up on a different name for the linden tree: lime. Lime green alternates with yellow and brown around the building. The darkest brown aligns with all the windows, which include outdoor dividers for keeping out sunlight.
John Hill
The openings on the altitude in sunlight (previous photograph) are nearly all shut, while the openings from the color here are nearly all open. This stems from the fact that buildings from Zurich do not have air conditioning. Period. Be it a shop, an office, a flat, a railway station. It’s not worth the effort once the period of summer heat is indeed brief. So during those times when it is hot in Zurich, cutting down on direct sunlight is very important.
John Hill
Zurich is also a city that embraces contemporary architecture, although not all of it is identifying. Buildings like the Lindenrinde veer from the standard without being officially different: This remains a boxy building with a regular arrangement of windows.
John Hill
Glass
Theo Hotz Partner designed this apartment building on Bäckerstrasse in a much denser portion of Zurich. The corner building stands out because of its floor-to-ceiling glass outside wall, but also because of the rooftop plantings that soften the straight lines.
John Hill
The building, which can be longer one one side than another, is not a straightforward glass box; it is eroded at the bottom and the top. These relate to the ground-floor retail stores along with the special flats on the roof. What underlies the whole is a grid of concrete horizontals and reddish verticals; the latter are particularly important, as will be seen.
John Hill
A close-up of this facade shows the large panes of fixed glass that alternative with two narrow verticals: one glass and one red. Shades and blinds cover the windows to cut down on direct sunlight. Most of the contemporary buildings in Zurich feature horizontal blinds, many of these on the outside of the glass facades.
John Hill
The red panel is really a door that opens to permit venting. Here we can see one panel open and one closed; the former carries a little railing for security.
John Hill
Concrete
The degree of craft in building with concrete from Zurich — and most of Switzerland, for that matter — is greater than in most of the world. Most exteriors shaped with reinforced concrete are painted, including stucco over concrete, but many new buildings leave the substance exposed. The qualities of concrete are usually not evident at first glance, but they show themselves the closer one gets.
John Hill
Concrete enabled architects Andreas Futhimann Gabrielle Hachler, with xpace structure, to form the exterior, putting fireplaces at the corner (to anchor it and make the building look taller) and cantilevering a portion of their upper floors. The building cuts in and out to set itself aside from the neighbors.
John Hill
The intentional shaping of this building is evident in this view looking upward at one of the corners. The feel and seams on the concrete start to become apparent that close.
The huge window openings are separated into large and tiny panes. Both may be opened slightly, but the smaller one can be opened all of the way inside, hence the railing across the window.
John Hill
A detail of this concrete and windows shows an intentional messiness from the joints and in the feel. It’s as if the architects needed to violate the grid of different-size windows that wraps the building; quite few of the joints follow the windows.
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