Detached House in Biberstein takes its tower-like, upwardly tapering form from the local building rules, a board-marked concrete base under a timber house by Gautschi Lenzin Schenker Architekten in Switzerland.
The house replaces an earlier one on a sloping site in a residential quarter of Biberstein, and the trees already standing on the plot were kept in mind as the new volume found its place. Four storeys stack above and into the ground: a board-marked concrete base set into the slope, and over it a timber house that steps inward as it climbs.
Entry is on the lower ground floor, tucked beneath the projecting corner of the floor above. A cloakroom hides under the timber stair; storage, a bicycle room and cellar rooms line the slope side. The stair climbs to the ground floor, where four rooms turn around a central hall like the vanes of a windmill. Sliding doors open each room fully onto the next, setting up changing lines of sight and spatial connections through the plan. A bathroom here draws daylight from above and air through a timber flap set into the facade, and a dressing room completes the level.
The stair to the upper floor is left open at its sides, so light drops all the way down to the lower ground floor. Above, a single long room holds the living area and the kitchen-dining space, zoned by the stair that rises through it. Slender timber lift-and-slide glazing opens the room onto a timber terrace laid at the same level, so that inside and outside merge. A parapet wraps the terrace, holding the valley and the Jura in view while screening the room from the street.
A narrow stair, its side packed out to carry the kitchen cupboards, climbs to the attic, where a studio room sits at the top of the house and a large fixed window frames the Alps. Throughout, the walls are lined inside and out with vertical solid timber boards, built as a vapour-open construction, while a fine vertical formwork pattern marks the concrete base. Interior walls and fittings are wood-based panels, chosen to keep costs down, and the floor slabs are dowelled plank-stack or hollow-box timber depending on the structural logic.
The floor itself, in the studio's words, "was cast from a lime-coloured unpolished flowing screed." Against the light natural wood, black kitchen units and window frames set a contrast, and cast concrete returns in the wet areas. "Technical installations were deliberately kept to a minimum," the studio notes.
