House with a Curtain / Allen + Crippa + Berger & Partner AG

closed

The building is three stories with a basement and consists of three identical floor plans and recalls the logic of old barn houses in the region. The servant spaces in the back house consist of a staircase, a bathroom, and a pantry. The served spaces in the front house consist of the living and dining room and the bedroom. The partition walls are designed as built-in furniture to allow for subsequent adaptation and to create as much storage space as possible.The house is situated in a residential area in the rhine valley and opens towards the garden with a view of the pre-alps. The cantilevered roofs direct the view to the large garden on the first floor and to the surrounding mountain peaks on the upper floor.Text description provided by the architects.During our studies at ETH, we were asked to design a single-family house and won the competition against two other offices. At that time, we had neither an office nor experience in construction, so we asked a local architectural firm, Berger & Partner AG, for support in the implementation.At the beginning, we experimented with different hybrid constructions and load-bearing systems to generate enough storage mass for the warm summer days on the one hand and achieve a slim wall structure on the other. The result is a load-bearing skeleton structure made of concrete with prefabricated wooden elements as exterior walls and a stretched textile façade as weather protection. The cantilevered floor slabs with external curtains provide additional sun protection and create a private outdoor area. Together with the sunblinds, the curtains, and the façade, the house is wrapped in a textile dress. A spout stages the drainage of the large roof areas and fills a well on the terrace that can be used to irrigate the garden.