HAUS-9
Review of the Week W44: Water Was the Load, From the Brienz Slope to the Layer Order in Your Wall
Review of W44: Brienz drainage, a Glaser condensation check in Python, raycast daylight and the OECD's 1.6 million places inside Swiss building zones.
Thirty-Four Piles, One Slab: How Chavannes' C4 Drum Lifts a Simulation Hospital Off the Ground
How C4, a 56 m concrete drum in Chavannes-près-Renens, frees its ground floor: 34 bored piles, a jointless 360 m raft and one prestressed transfer slab.
Creative Factory, Renens: Saw Open the Slab, Keep the Mushroom Columns, Pave the Park
Bauart and Patrimonium turned a 1950s Coop warehouse in Renens into 51 homes: a sawn atrium, kept mushroom columns, cut concrete reused as park paving.
Kantonsschule Wattwil: The Toggenburg Forest Became the Floors of Its Own Valley's School
Gunz & Künzle's Kantonsschule Wattwil opened 10 August 2026: CLT ribbed slabs tied to concrete cores, built from 3,623 m³ of mostly Toggenburg timber.
Two Towers on a Tram Depot: Depot Hard in Zürich-West, Read From the Molasse Up
How Depot Hard in Zürich-West carries 65 and 68 m towers over a tram depot: 111 piles, a 430 t mass on springs, a prestressed slab and outrigger floors.
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.
