Natural hi-tech

The lightness and precision of wood in three Swiss projects: an Alpine refuge, an administrative building for an open-air museum and a residential building.

Every project represents a thrust forward, and implies constructing for the present while thinking of the future. This is particularly important today, with a growing need for responsible management of our changing environmental circumstances. The symptoms are familiar to us all: the greenhouse effect, global warming, dwindling resources. The various causes include the construction and management of buildings, accounting for 40 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. The solutions must combine a scientific approach to resources and renewed sensitivity to their qualities. In architecture, wood has this potential. Multifarious and versatile, wood has shaken off its status as a rural Alpine cliché and is now recognised as a high-tech material with a low environmental impact. If well managed, its production is unlimited. In this case production takes place in forests, operational "factories" that also offer recreational space, while absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen as a by-product. The advantages of building in wood are many: lightness, speed and ease of construction, precision, fewer unexpected contingencies during works, variety, beauty and natural comfort. Indeed, in his lectures for Harvard , Italo Calvino cited lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency as being the most important characteristics for this millennium. Building has ecological consequences, but a project's sustainability also lies in the degree of exchange it establishes with its cultural and physical surroundings. This is exemplified by three pieces of recent architecture in Switzerland.

Pool Architekten's residential building along Badenerstrasse in central Zurich is situated in an unmistakably urban context. The rhythm of volumes on the street front features deeply retracted parts. This bold linguistic statement is also functional, placing more distance between the 54 apartments and the noise, as well as giving them double exposure with a view over the park at the rear.

Top: The new compact and
complex volume of the Ospizio
San Gottardo as it appears
to those coming through the
mountain pass from the north. <br /> Above: The photo comparison of
before and after renovation
reveals the architects’ desire
to declutter in favour of
architectural clarity. Photo Ruedi Walti. — Top: The new compact and complex volume of the Ospizio San Gottardo as it appears to those coming through the mountain pass from the north.
Above: The photo comparison of before and after renovation reveals the architects’ desire to declutter in favour of architectural clarity. Photo Ruedi Walti.

The dynamic feeling is repeated in the zigzag design of the facade elements, which, along with the corner windows, hint at the lightness of the building's load-bearing wooden structure. Although not visible, the wood produces its beneficial effects. Thanks to the complex's insulation properties, reduced dependency on fossil fuels, and absorption of carbon dioxide, it is the first to comply with the demanding requirements of the Società 2000 Watt programme, which aims to lower per capita annual consumption to 2 kW by 2050. The construction is simple: six floors built of solid wood sitting atop a reinforced concrete ground-floor slab. The work was carried out using the Topwall system, with a series of fir-wood beams attached to one another and then insulated, stuccoed and clad with fibre-cement panels on the outside. The prefabricated floors are connected to the walls via wooden dowels. The energy required to run the building is supplied by a heat pump, solar panels, and the recycling of heat produced by the supermarket on the ground floor.

Made for a construction cooperative, the building at 380 Badenerstrasse serves as an example of how a project can be sustainable without sacrificing its status as a good piece of urban architecture. The open-air museum of Ballenberg shows typical building types from all over Switzerland. Each building is an original, with no replicas. However, in its position and in relation to the neighbourhood, the museum appears to be out of its element. In 2010, Gion Caminada designed the administrative building for this place of different stories. Caminada's modus operandi revolves around making architecture that continues tradition, but by means of compatible interpretation rather than copying.

The building’s street front in downtown Zurich along the Badenerstrasse. Photo Joseph Micciché.

At Ballenberg, every building represents a different tradition and construction logic, with the only common factor being the high level of craftsmanship dictated by the circumstances to be found at the various places of origin. Caminada worked on this theme, designing a building that stands out with two clear-cut elements: a grid of columns and a highly expressive facade. Unlike pillars that must only uphold weight, columns describe the exchange between forces, material and human will. Here, the columns allow a flexible organisation of space throughout the building, distributing it over three storeys by means of a staircase placed symbolically in the centre. The reception area and meeting rooms are located on the ground floor, while managerial offices are arranged on the first floor. The top floor is given over to a library and study rooms for educational purposes. The jute-clad partition walls stop short of the ceiling, thus leaving the entire pattern of the beams exposed.

As a piece of architecture, the new Ospizio San Gottardo is half continuity and half unexpected analogy—an urban structure built in the mountains by pure dint of will.

Left: interiors in the
construction phase. Right: In the finished apartments,
no structural wood is visible. Photos Joseph Micciché. — Left: interiors in the construction phase. Right: In the finished apartments, no structural wood is visible. Photos Joseph Micciché.

Caminada reveals all his sensitivity in the design of the facade, which is prefabricated using elements made of local fir. The simple wooden planking is meticulously crafted so that the transitions from walls to roof cornice, together with the corner panels and window frames, seem more like the seams and hems of a well-made suit. This mannerist approach is almost baroque in its expression, and liberates the system from any mechanicalness while elevating the building to the same level of the other structures at Ballenberg—original yet coherent architecture.

Corner detail with prefab
wooden elements. Photo Lorenz Jaisli. — Corner detail with prefab wooden elements. Photo Lorenz Jaisli.

The Gotthard Pass has always been one of the main links between the Mediterranean and Middle Europe. Reaching its altitude of 2,091 metres still presents a challenge today, and it is not surprising that as far back as the 13th century there was already mention of a hospice for wayfarers, which was expanded in the 17th century with a chapel and continuously enlarged thereafter to meet growing demands. A new chapter of this story was written in 2010 by the practice Miller & Maranta from Basel, who completely refurbished the hospice to bring it up to par with current hotel standards. The project is based on the character of the pre-existing construction, which was respected and critically overhauled by refining certain elements of confusion and architectural weakness. The most evident intervention was the reattachment of the hospice's separate blocks and the chapel under a single large roof clad in lead and featuring numerous dormers. Inserting a modern hotel into a historical building is no painless operation. Indeed, it proved necessary to build a building within the building, gutting the old structure but preserving its facades, adding an extra storey towards the south and reinforcing it with cement edging that carries the roof.

The central staircase that
structures the interior space. Photo Lucia Degonda. — The central staircase that structures the interior space. Photo Lucia Degonda.

The lower storeys were built in masonry, while the upper levels have a wooden structure that uses a local technique of beams, pillars and planking. From the outside this wooden structure is invisible, covered by the roof and protected by the stone walls. The decision to exploit a dry-mounted structure allowed for the prefabrication of elements lower in the valley, from where they were transported and mounted during the short summer months without snowfall. The wood also optimises the building's consumption of energy, which is produced by a heat pump. A small door gives access to the service rooms and a large living room with an adjacent library. A wooden staircase between the two grey-stuccoed walls leads to the upper floors with their small rooms. A niche with an alcove and simple furnishings pay homage to the character of the old hospice.

In the rooms the wood is finally left exposed to our eyes, hands and nose. A wooden room in the mountains might not seem particularly unusual. But looking out of the windows, we see nothing but rock. Like in the city, this is a mineral world; the forest is nowhere to be seen. As a piece of architecture, the new Ospizio San Gottardo is half continuity and half unexpected analogy—an urban structure built in the mountains by pure dint of will. For this reason it is a memorable building for those on their way through the Gotthard Pass, catching sight of this very vertical edifice, placed there in defiance of a sublime place.
Alberto Alessi,
architect

Natural hi-tech

The lightness and precision of wood in three Swiss projects: an Alpine refuge, an administrative building for an open-air museum and a residential building.

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