'Just because housing is low-cost doesn't
mean it can be built cheaply', the architects
explain, because t here is a glass floor on
building cheaply due to Swiss standards and
construction costs and wages. 'But what you
can do is design apartments where more
people live within the surface area.' Here,
front doors open onto a 'kitchen-hall':
simultaneously a kitchen, dining room, living
area and hallway, with the other rooms
opening from it and a loggia at one end. It
has a kind of country kitchen feel, where you
take off muddy boots, put the kettle on and
gather, but it is also a clever space-saving
trick, eliminating the need for a pokey
corridor - a similar device to that used by
Peter Markli in t he apartments for the Im
Gut co-operative completed in 2014 across
the other side of t he city. With the internal
doors ajar, in many flats you are able to see
out through windows of each surrounding
room from your seat at t he dining table.
Zurich does not have specific enforceable
space standards, but even t hese supposedly
small floor areas still put London space
standards to shame: up to 76.5m^2 for a
one-bedroom flat c01npared with London's
paltry 50m^2 minilnum, and clocking up to
20m^2 bigger than the three-bedroom
minimum. Pitched at fa1nilies, most of the
building's 21 flats are three-bedroom. The
residents represent a cross-section of society
from all walks of life, from architects to
teachers to cleaners, like British council
housing used to before it was p itifully
reduced to serving only the very poorest.
Not only does this produce a mix of different
people in each building but it also ensures
that co-operative and public foundation
housing models have support from across
the political spectrum.
As Padmanabhan points out, co-
operatives and public foundations are
satisfying clients to work for because 'they
invest in durable high-quality materials to
keep the maintenance costs low'. The same
organisation builds, manages and leases t he
housing, so there is a motive to emphasise
longevity, something sorely missed in
developments sold for a quick profit. Details
are robust and simple : shadow gaps where
the walls meet the exposed concrete ceiling,
black painted door reveals and Loosian
candy-striped bathroom t iles. E ach kitchen-
hall is anchored by a solid terrazzo column
in its corner, load-bearing with some help
from the adjacent concrete wall, ensuring it
would be entirely indispensable if value-
engineering ever wielded its axe.
Impressively, the column's parquet 'shadow'
- inspired by Peter Celsing's Villa
Klockberga - and t he delicate patches of
tiles for pot plants set into t he timber
flooring came in under budget so passed
through unnoticed. One of the only
con cession s ·was t he removal of t he door on
the coat r ack, saving a total of just 3,000
CH F from t h e 10.6 million CID' price tag.
From an outsider's perspective t here is
something unavoidably Swiss about
Waldmeisterweg : t he annoyingly solid,
high-quality build, the utopian communal
laundry, t he apartments so airtight you have
to open t he balcony door when you turn on
the kitchen extractor fan or 'it will suck the
dust out of t he plug sockets'. Ltitjens
P admanabhan are 'very conscious of our
architectural forefathers', having both
worked at Meili Peter Architekten and
Diener & Diener. But, however quietly, they
are subversively reacting against the
well-crafted concrete weight of t he Svviss
architecture canon. Perversely, t h ey love
that t he concrete at ~Taldmeisterweg is
crappy rather than cast with S·wiss
precision, that shuttering joints are slightly
haphazard and tile grids are interrupted and
cut in places, that compr omises were made
in a country renowned for its
uncompromising architects.
The rear facade, rather than structured by
colossal Swiss windows 'designed from t he
outside' and unworkable inside, is a happy
generous surface which gladly accepts pot
plants, fairy lights, bunting, banner s and
blinds. Sweet little garden lights with feet
and cat-eared fen ces (a memory of the feline
letter box at Binningen - AR October 2014)
reveal a sense of humour firmly closeted in
most Swiss architecture. 'We feel very alone
in Switzerland', Padmanabhan rues. And
with Brunelleschi and Venturi Scott Brown
out front, Peter Celsing in the living room,
and Loos in the bathroom, it is a veritable
party, albeit ·with some Swiss restraint.
So this, possibly the least Swiss of Swiss
housing projects, is the envy of architects
from across the political spectrum,
particularly in the UK, who herald t h e Swiss
housing model as a utopian dream, and
Zurich as the holy urban grail - after all, it is
the second happiest city in the world
(surpassed only by Vienna). Perhaps it is
inconvenient to point out that Switzerland is
one of the most con servative countries in
Europe, wit h the populist right-wing Swiss
People's Party (SVP) forming the largest
part of its Federal Assembly. There is no
free health service, women didn't achieve full
suffrage until1991, and compulsory paid
maternity leave was only made law in 2004.
Co-operatives and public foundations have
stepped in to provide social housing because
the state would not. Homelessness statistics
are disquietingl y impossible to find.
vVhile t he co-operative model works
admirably in countries such as Switzerland,
Germany and Sweden, it is pertinent to
remember they are also some of t he richest
countries in t he world, and it is t hese states,
wit h the most wealt h, t hat are relying on
other organisations to provide housing for
their people - because t hey will not. Perhaps
not so utopian, after all.The kitchen-hall, loggia
and front room pivot
around a load-bearing
terrazzo column
(opposite) which throws a
timber 'shadow' across the
door's threshold. The door
here opens the wall
entirely to the ceiling to
connect with the
kitchen-hall. Loggias look
out over the surrounding
Gartenstadtof low
tenements and stately
villas (above)