Site Specific: Haus in Winterthur

Stefan Wülser & Nicolaj Bechtel - Winterthur, Switzerland, 2020

SW&NB A four-storey house with a great garden and many small rooms is to become a cohesive, versatile apartment for a young family. Thanks to a new spiral staircase, present as a sculpture in the ground floor and first floor rooms, the garden level becomes an integral part of the living spaces above.

In order to obliterate the traces of the houses’ earlier partitions, new structural interventions are integrated in a specific manner. These new supporting players give the rooms character but do not create breaks between spaces: Instead of a supporting wall on the ground floor, the ceiling above is hung from the wall above. Instead of the solid foundation wall in the basement, a new, table-like support structure holds the loads and is positioned as an object between the living room and the garden room.

The other interventions affecting the space, such as the enlargement of the entrance and the installation of a kitchen on the ground floor, follow the same strategy of minimising separation. New partitions are designed as glass membranes, refracting the light but allowing the uses behind it to shimmer through. The cloakroom utilises large wall panels, which used to line the room, as privacy screens. Room separation and spatially effective zoning become blurred.

NOTES

Published 9th October 2020.

Photographs © Nicolaj Bechtel.

Thanks to Stefan Wülser and Nicolaj Bechtel for sharing their project and for their help in compiling this post.

For more information about this project visit stefanwulser.ch.