The Stettbacherrain neighborhood, on the northern side of the city of Zurich, is a residential development of very high urban and landscape quality, located between city and nature. The area was developed according to modernist ideals of green and light as basic human needs.

Without a sentimental attempt to replicate the existing buildings, we proposed two wooden volumes that retain the spatial and natural qualities of the preexistence. This strategy allows to preserve the visual references that are important for the tranquility and natural quality of the neighborhood, as well as the green passages and the fine-meshed network of nature between the buildings.

The two new buildings aim to keep and enhance the visual continuity between the street and the forest. The courtyard is meant to be a meeting point for the neighborhood, connecting the street to the vegetation in the east where the landscape will be kept as a natural, calm and protected space. A central theme in this project is the variation of housing typologies, which appeals to a wide range of residents with different needs and living concepts. In this sense, the spatial configurations of the two buildings are very different even though they are realized within a similar structural system.