NICOLA BAVIERA

apartment house Urdorf

Burkhalter, Marianne (ed.)
Foffa, Federica (ed.)

The uniform use of material—the silver-coloured corrugated sheets enveloping the entire building—highlights the horizontal nature of the architectural volume. The plan is divided into four parts, and the façades are proportionally adapted to the context. Overhangs, recesses, and symmetries break up the mass of the building. Curiously, the entrance façade, with its central gable, stands out as the only architectural element reminiscent of traditional houses in the area. Three volumes of the box-shaped building project into space; like large ‘drawers’, they disrupt the form and provide the building with strength and identity.
The roof transforms into a landscape, showcasing a geometric variety as a tectonic experiment that pushes the boundaries of regulatory distances. I am reminded of the expressive forms and innovative designs of the roofs at Pizzigoni’s Casa Nani2 in Bergamo, an Italian rationalist revered for his mastery of proportions, structures, and details — an ardent advocate of experimentation — where plans, forms, proportions, materials, and construction embody fundamental rational ideas. There is no formal whimsy, only pure tectonics.