Hungerberg Mountain Housing
The site for the development is situated on the southern slope of the Hungerberg on the outskirts of Aarau. The plot is enclosed in the informal scattered settlement pattern of the surrounding neighbourhood of single-family houses, encompassed to the north along its entire length by the adjacent edge of the forest. The distinct and ideally sunlit hillside location of the former vineyard provides a wonderful view of the River Aare and the old town of Aarau. The project was planned as a form of garden settlement, consisting of six individual residential housing units clustered into the terrain and aligned to the slope of the hillside. The embedding of the new buildings into the steep topography is undertaken using a gentle terracing of the buildings’ immediate surroundings. The development consists of six single-family houses, whereby sets of two respective residential units are combined to form a type of double-family house, the six units taking on the appearance of four individual structures. The residential houses are mostly composed of five rooms with the corresponding auxiliary spaces. According to their occupancy, the buildings are furnished with freely utilizable multifunctional spaces in the pedestal area. The main living areas and the corresponding terraces and private outdoor spaces are each organised horizontally on a single level, whereby the intrinsic living areas are given an interior as well as exterior volumetric pre-eminence by means of an extended room height and a oriel-like panorama window. The buildings are conceived as solid constructions, their appearance regulated in horizontal layers of exposed concrete, buckled gently in response to the topography. Large-format wooden windows with occasional heavy frame extensions, as well as partially room-high infilling and doors in untreated wood, reinforce the feeling of closeness to nature and honeycomb the solidity of the concrete.
