Gus Wüstemann Architects has renovated a multi-family house with workshop rooms underneath in the area Seefeld of the city of Zurich. The house has been in a core zone since the new regulations. Therefore the outlines of the existing volumes are protected and the project had to be developed in collaboration with the conservation of monuments.
The project is a contextual dialogue with history, the house is 170 years old. The historic, massive stone walls were the starting point for applying new contemporary forms of living. Gus Wüstemann architects have removed the original plaster layers and this led to a raw state of the natural stone walls, which never existed. In a confined space, Zurich-based architects have developed a flowing, free-flowing space along the natural stone walls.
Spaces represent a new typology of promenade architecturale in a confined space, where, depending on the social structure and the course of the day, the programs unfold and communicate with the periphery, the natural stone wall. The built in light weight structures are plastered with basic plaster and have a rocky appearance. The built-in furniture is made of raw concrete, raw wood and raw plaster. The wooden windows were mounted directly onto the natural stone slabs with 20cm thick solid wooden frames.
