The apartment building was planned and built in 1954 by a local engineer together with a master builder. The building has a well-proportioned façade with ribbon windows and conically recessed balconies and may be classified as a subtly designed representative of its time.

A fall line in need of renovation suggested a comprehensive intervention in the bathrooms and kitchens. The depth of intervention was adjusted to the life cycle of the building. The main rooms are rather narrow for today's needs, the load-bearing structure is weak, the floor construction is suboptimal for today's noise requirements. The recessed balconies remained energetically problematic. Therefore, a remaining useful life of 20 to 30 years was specified for the construction.

The intervention on the climbing zone was used to renovate the bathroom and kitchen. By merging the WC into the bathroom, space was created for a larger kitchen in the 3.5 room apartments and for a reduction in the 2.5 room apartment. Large passageways across the corridors create a more open connection between the street and the courtyard. In this central section, concrete stone slabs play with the spirit of the original substance.

On the living side, the living rooms and bedrooms were combined. Tapered wall elements take up the geometry of the balconies in the time spirit of the new building and grasp the living area more clearly as space. In the 3.5-room apartment, this arrangement creates a central dining area in front of the balcony. The sequence of rooms is continued opposite in a studio, which can be separated by a sliding door and used as a workroom or room for a small child. The new transverse orientation of these rooms relieves the somewhat unfavorable room proportions. In the 2.5-room apartment, they separate a dining area with kitchen from the living area. A freely laid oak parquet with frieze supports this enfilade.

We wanted to retain the color concept of the façade developed in the eighties by the regionally known artist Hans Anliker.

Client
Private

Services Baumgartner + Partner
General planning, architecture, site management

Planning Team
Civil Engineer: MWV Bauingenieure AG, Baden
HLKKS engineer: Hossle GmbH, Brugg
Building physicist: Amstein + Walthert, Zurich

Realization August 2018 to March 2019
Construction costs (BKP 1-5) CHF 1.6 million