ELDERLY HOUSING, ZURICH

Integrated Urban Development

In an area with diverse building typologies that lack a common identity, a neutral and compact building seeks a strong and sensitive integration with its context, ensuring an optimal distribution of the program and dialogue with the surroundings.

The new building will parallel Heidi Abel Weg and the main street of the “Inner Garden”, acting as a new landmark and engaging with the green corridor. Slightly set back from the eastern boundary, it respects the surrounding buildings while the main facades of the apartments open towards the rear garden, maximizing green space and enhancing the park.

The building’s layout promotes clear relationships between its parts: the common areas face south, benefiting from views of the park and sunlight, encouraging interaction with secondary school students. The main entrance, to the west, runs through the garden, with bicycle parking and access from the street for convenience. A secondary entrance on the east ensures permeability.

The entrance area and main staircase promote resident interaction, with common and operational rooms opening to outdoor spaces. The flexible common area includes various zones with different heights for simultaneous uses. An integrated kitchen connects to a combination room, workshop, fitness, and multifunctional room, while ancillary rooms transition between common and living areas.

The building's rational and repetitive load-bearing structure allows for flexible use combinations, housing 110 apartments in varying sizes. A typology based on a room module around a double wet room integrates different apartment types within the same system. Larger apartments are at the ends of the building, while the ground floor hosts more compact units.

Materialization

The new housing estate showcases an ecological, climate-friendly, and cost-effective wood-concrete hybrid construction. This approach emphasizes the architectural and structural significance of each building part through differentiated material use, intertwining construction and statics to achieve a unique architectural expression.

The structure begins with a solid concrete ground floor, supporting an eight-storey wood-concrete composite system. This modular ceiling system is about 25% lighter than conventional solid construction, promoting resource efficiency. Balconies and pergolas form an external skeleton, using thin, prefabricated concrete slabs suspended from a circumferential roof wreath.

The use of recycled concrete for in-situ components and prefabricated slabs further enhances sustainability by recycling construction waste and conserving gravel reserves. This innovative material choice not only reduces environmental impact but also integrates modern timber construction techniques with traditional methods.

Structure

The building's design focuses on economic planning with a skeleton structure and disc-like bracing, featuring regular spans and high repetition. There are two main spans: 3.3 meters and 6.3 meters.

The building's full height has ceilings supported either on wooden partition walls or wooden beams/supports. The use of load-bearing wooden walls is minimized to allow for flexible merging of apartment modules. The repetitive spans of wood-concrete composite ceilings on each floor promote an economical, industrial construction method.

The ceilings follow the traditional HBV system, with an offset in the spruce wood board stacks at the bottom, enhancing the wood/concrete connection and providing static advantages, better living quality, and improved acoustics. The HBV ceiling elements, 8 to 12 cm thick, offer advantages in air-conditioning storage, sound and vibration properties, and static ceiling pane effect. They absorb horizontal loads from wind and earthquakes, distributing them to the access core and load-bearing interior walls into the basement.

Balconies and pergolas use prefabricated 14 cm high concrete ceilings, suspended by tie rods and supported by steel brackets. The 8th-floor roof's tensile loads are supported by wide steel profiles, distributing forces to the load-bearing walls.

Access cores, staircases, and basements are constructed in solid form. The ground floor supports the upper floors with concrete walls and columns, and the concrete ceiling allows for cantilevers in the corners for common areas. The basement floors, braced by interior and exterior walls, form a rigid basement box to be founded flat based on a load-bearing subsoil, pending further details from a geotechnical report.

Result

The planned supporting structure employs resource-saving HBV elements and wooden partition walls, ensuring an economical and effective construction method. Components will be delivered and assembled "just-in-time," optimizing construction site logistics. This approach harmoniously meets architectural and usage needs, combining cost efficiency with sustainability and functionality.

Building Construction Concept

The construction concept features opaque façades made from prefabricated timber frame elements with rear-ventilated external cladding, directly attached to the floor slabs. Windows and French doors, equipped with triple insulating glazing, are integrated into these timber frame elements.

Key aspects include:

• Main Façades: Comprised of prefabricated parapet elements, attached to the supporting structure, featuring cantilevered photovoltaic (PV) elements.

• Windows: Continuous window bands with fixed glazing and opening sashes.

• Sun Protection: External sun protection systems are in place.

• Cladding: Vertical cladding is used around shell columns.

• Balconies: Individual balcony elements, positioned within the depth of the cantilevered PV elements, interrupt the horizontal parapet bands.

This design ensures energy efficiency, structural integrity, and aesthetic coherence.