HAUS-9
85 Metres of Cooperative: The ABZ Tower Where Every Party Wall Does Two Jobs
Read the ABZ cooperative tower in Zürich from its 25 m piles to its 1,700 m² roof, and see how load-bearing party walls help keep rents at CHF 19–21/m².
Hotel Leo, St. Gallen: concrete carries the load, borrowed earth makes the rooms
Boltshauser's Hotel Leo won Mendelsohn Award Gold: a precast concrete frame with 50 kg unfired earth-block partitions pressed from nearby excavation spoil.
The Tower That Was Already There: TITLIS Turns a 1980s Antenna Into a Swiss Cross
At 3,020 m, Herzog & de Meuron kept a 1980s PTT antenna's rock anchorage, steel frame and tunnel, then added two glazed volumes in a Swiss cross.
The Bauhaus Vorkurs: The Six-Month Training Set That Taught Architects to See Before They Build
How the Bauhaus Vorkurs of Itten, Moholy-Nagy and Albers worked as a curriculum-first training set, and what it teaches Swiss offices adopting AI today.
Nine Centimetres Over the A1: Heinz Isler's Cloth-Found Shells at Deitingen Süd
Heinz Isler's 1968 shells at Deitingen Süd span 31 m with 9 cm of concrete, their form found with hanging cloth. A Solothurn monument since 2000.
Miguel Fisac's Pagoda: A 16-Metre Square, Rotated, and the Straight Lines That Made Concrete Curve
How Miguel Fisac rotated a 16 m square into hyperbolic paraboloids, why his Madrid Pagoda still teaches, and a Grasshopper snippet to rebuild one face.
The Building That Packs Itself: Emilio Pérez Piñero’s «Teatro Ambulante» of 1961
In 1961 student Emilio Pérez Piñero won the UIA prize in London with a travelling theatre whose dome folds into a bundle of bars. See how the node works.
Torres Blancas: the concrete body that refused to be demolished
Sáenz de Oíza's 46-pillar monocoque tower in Madrid — 23,243 m² of concrete that couldn't be demolished. What its isotropic slabs teach a 2026 carbon desk.
The School That Knows Its Own End Date — Kantonsschule Stadelhofen's Dübendorf Modules
Kantonsschule Stadelhofen's Dübendorf branch — ~250 timber modules, Minergie-Eco, built in 15 months and detailed to come apart at the end of the 2030s.
The building that became the exhibit: reading the Lucas Museum from inside its curved skin
The 28,000 m² Lucas Museum opens 22 Sept 2026 — a free-form MAD shell where Star Wars art, NURBS geometry and the building-OS share one coordinate system.
