Residential Development Riedacker

The two large buildings comprising the Riedacker cooperative residential development are located in northern Zurich. They are set within a heterogeneous setting between Altwiesenstrasse and Dübendorferstrasse. Here, Albert Steiner’s garden city transitions into the ensembles of late modernism. The immediate context includes single-family and commercial buildings and a church. The two buildings acknowledge Schwamendingen’s garden city qualities, but interpret them in a distinctive configuration and a new mode of living.

This dwelling form centers around a large square space that occupies each corner of the building. The space is divided by two diagonally inserted glass membranes into a kitchen, a living room, and a terrace. We have compared this spatial structure to a arbor and spoken of living on a large terrace. In the four- and five-story buildings, living beside the garden is, as it were, stacked.

The staggered massing is wrapped by a thin outer skin featuring a finely woven network of aluminum, glass, and wood. The bright interiors transition into dark, hard-surfaced stairways, which, for their part, boast exterior qualities – the g arbor of each apartment is, figuratively speaking, directly accessible from the outside and yet part of an interior collective.

In cooperation with Baumberger Stegmeier Architektur
Project competition in 2018, 1. prize
Construction 2018–2023