Residential and studio building, Suhr

The site is in the northern village part of Suhr, close to the border to the town of Aarau. This quarter is characterised by cubic, two to three storey residential buildings and master-builder houses from the previous century, and this typology and its volumes had a considerable influence on the design.

The new building has the dimensions of a cube – consequently its footprint is a square. The top level is a modern interpretation of an attic storey. The way in which the building is terminated underlines the cubic approach.

A second building is positioned at the rear of the site is the main studio. A courtyard-like space created between the two new buildings serves as a terrace for the ground floor apartments and the same time borders and protects the eastern driveway to the underground garage. In the west the terrace opens to the plant gardens. The entire complex stands on a plinth that rises above the surrounding ground level.

The organising principle for the extremely clear basic form was provided by the “sacred section” – not the golden section – which was once often used for important residential buildings and is based on halving the diagonal of the square. As a result, every room is the same size. The entire floor plan is based on this modular system. Through the special position of the kitchen cube along an inner facade the individual rooms are spatially connected with each other and can be closed off by means of sliding walls.

This project comes from the oeuvre of Leuner & Zampieri (1990–2000).