Politically, Sennhof belongs to the city of Winterthur, but geographically the suburb is clearly separated from the urban area and forms a rural exclave in the Töss valley. The river not only shapes the topography, it also aligns the elements of the settlement in the direction of flow: Buildings, roads, railway line, forest edges. This also applies to the buildings and open spaces of the new Oberzelg housing scheme, which is squeezed between the cantonal road and the railway line.
For the office, the commission in Sennhof is one of the few in which it is not about densification, but about new planning on a greenfield site. Instead of sharpening the existing identity of the location, the aim here is to develop a new – suburban – identity. This is why this project is conceived from the public spaces, and why these public spaces are particularly explicitly designed as urban outdoor spaces that interact as a sequence of squares and alleyways. The squares are framed by airy loggias and elevated private gardens to invite individual appropriation and create a festive setting for living together in the neighbourhood. The reference to traditional housing estates is continued in the construction – single-stone masonry with scratched plaster.
