Together with Rolf Mühlethaler and Graber Pulver Architekten, Esch Sintzel designed a building site in Bern's new Schönberg-Ost neighbourhood. The underlying masterplan by Hans Kollhoff refers to bourgeois residential neighbourhoods from the turn of the century, such as the immediately adjacent Schosshalde district.
The brief for the two residential buildings was fundamentally different: high status and spacious versus radically reduced and affordable. Two fundamentally different typological concepts were derived from this: a centripetal floor plan (oriented towards an inner centre) for the large flats, and a centrifugal floor plan (moving away from the centre) for the smaller ones.
A typological model was found in the bourgeois residential hall, which is oriented towards an inner centre and thus avoids confrontation with the nearby neighbouring houses. In each flat, three loggias span threshold spaces between the private and public worlds.
The small flats in the other building, on the other hand, have been trimmed for maximum efficiency. Large sliding windows in the corners of the building replace loggias. To create space for the opened sliding windows, the outer wall is offset outwards. In this way, the movement of the windows creates a movement of the façade surfaces, which are sculpturally structured solely by this staggered depth.
See also House with Living-Halls
