The strategy of densifying the existing building fabric creates new collective space and centrality. The level of interaction grows with the increase in activities and spatial density. By bundling and strengthening the existing node field, a dissolution and lack of reference is counteracted. The new structure is intended to create proximity to the existing school buildings and outdoor facilities and use the familiar access routes. The extension encloses the large central sports field of the school complex, similar to an urban square, and thus defines a place of high social density. At the same time, the new building complements this square with a spacious covered outdoor area. This new space can be used in a variety of ways and is easily accessible thanks to the four open corners. A special feature of the design is the generously covered and open “meeting floor”. The open first floor, the “empty space” is full of content. The decision to design an unenclosed space is the result of spatial unbundling and the desire to create a space charged with energy and excitement. The individual sensory experience is promoted where experiences, ideas and possibilities come together and the relationship to the surroundings can always be experienced. A spatial continuum that lends identity and continuity to the site and leads deep into the topographical edge to give the site maximum tension.

The new-build detached house is located in the rear, private area of a narrow plot with a slight slope. A continuous living space at ground level, which is glazed at the front and rear to the garden and framed at the sides by living rooms, forms the centerpiece. The resulting spatial continuum seamlessly connects the interior and exterior spaces. On the sides, sliding and folding doors connect or separate the living space and the adjoining rooms as required. Cross-references are deliberately permitted and rigid boundaries are largely dispensed with, allowing the living space to remain variable and expandable. The central space is the result of a spatial disentanglement that originates in the separation of the main load-bearing walls, within which the enclosed spaces are formed. The room with the densest content, the main living space, is structurally an “empty” room and thus experiences tension and calm in equal measure. A narrow staircase leads to the upper floor. This rests on the four inner corner points of the outer walls below. Interestingly, the limiting moments of the “empty space” are thus given a heavy load and accentuated. The load-bearing external walls made of exposed concrete are at right angles to each other on both floors. This is a consequence of the chosen orientation of the rooms and the deliberate structural interplay between sensitivity and robustness. Contrasts that allude to the unevenness of the terrain and the pressure of the structural density and, in their simultaneous restlessness and simplicity, shape the enclosed space.

The new apartment building is a proposal for urban living in the countryside, where freedom of movement and density go hand in hand. It makes use of its diverse surroundings and transforms them into a building that connects the upper countryside with the lower suburban area. As a pavilion in the garden, the aim is to create a connection between the apartments and the surrounding nature without compromising the newly envisioned urban presence and scale. A Blue Rider is to appear as a symbol of the departure towards a new way of living and a new urbanity in the hub of a peripheral area of the Zurich metropolitan region. The existing green space is seen as one of the main qualities that must be preserved and strengthened. The valuable existing trees represent this quality and characterize the cubature of the proposed building, whose form and position consider the preservation of all trees. In view of the general desire to live in continuity with the outdoor spaces, the extensive verandas are conceived as outdoor spaces. These are areas that can be used either as outdoor or extended indoor spaces, depending on the climatic conditions, and that allow an intense proximity to the existing trees and the garden all around. The proposal for a daily life that is very much connected to the outdoor space is seen as a great quality that is possible in suburban areas such as Brassersdorf, as opposed to very densely populated urban areas.

The new Sonnenbad is a place for recreation and social interaction, and includes a variety of different all-year-round services. Its centerpiece is a natural swimming pool, located in the middle of a vast garden area with a valuable population of trees. The circular pool includes a swimmer and non-swimmer area and a surrounding pond for biological water filtration and treatment. The pool is complemented by open and covered recreation areas, changing rooms, a restaurant and a kiosk, an event hall and a youth center, a sauna with a relaxation zone, and a small maintenance area. The existing buildings date back to the early 20th century and were built at a time when public and group hygiene and health awareness became important. The latter are now at the end of their life cycle, hence replaced and complemented by a modular wooden structure. The linear historical layout and its enclosed outdoor areas are incorporated and further developed. The architecture is reduced to a structure that may serve as the origin for multifaceted and diverse places, moods and associations. The structure can be sometimes stronger or sometimes weaker and should be able to adapt to the needs and the times. This new place is characterized by interplay between framing and permeability, between closeness and expansion, eventually between fragility and resilience.

The horizontal building structure is thoughtfully embedded into the contours of the hillside; the transition from the interior to the exterior is seamless and fluid. The narrow retaining walls bordering the residence and the enveloping yard give shape to a courtyard setting and preserve the palpable feel of the sloping terrain. A set of steps delineates the spatial flow of the interiors from entryway to the living, dining, and kitchen areas, picking up on the character of the descending outdoor terrain. The floor, fireplace, and two exterior load-bearing shear walls are made of concrete. A homogeneous structure, seemingly cast in one piece, encases the living room and serves as the foundation to the overlying wood construction. A solid wood construction consisting of four exterior sheer walls and two transverse walls forms the structure of the overlying story, where the bedrooms are located. The wood construction is left exposed to the interior, while glass and metal surfaces form a weather barrier on the exterior. The wood structure rests on two vertical concrete shear walls, cantilevering to the front and back. It is stabilized by way of cross-bracing steel tension bars on the east- and west-facing windows that hold the two wooden shear walls together. The ceiling on the ground floor is hung front to back by way of tension rods attached to the two transverse steel roof beams. The concrete construction on the ground level and the wood construction on the upper level interlock at two key junctions: the transverse concrete wall balanced over the fireplace forms the rear wall of the upstairs master bedroom and concrete bathtub; on the opposite side by the staircase, the wood construction runs through to the ground level. Two differing construction methods join in mutual dependency. What emerges is a static balancing act that unleashes an energetic, expansive sense of space and engenders an architectural language rich in associations.

Seen from afar, the museum appears to be a heavy, closed structure that rests in itself and hovers flat above the ground. The two bodies each stand on two feet and allow the open public space to flow deep into the interior and close to the surrounding wall. There is no threshold and no boundary. The first floor is a flowing area between inside and outside. Protected under one roof, the visitor maintains a direct connection to the interior and exterior space, to the museum and to the park. It is an open spatial continuum, as the rooms are all public and not private. An interplay between open levels and seemingly closed volumes, a dualism that is almost liberating. The horizontal open spatial continuum transcends close to the perimeter wall to form a vertically opening space. This reinforces the necessary spatial distance to the wall in the south-west of the complex and its articulation. The declared "empty space" is by no means emptiness. The resulting emptiness is the result of a spatial disentanglement and it is the energy and tension of this empty space that can be perceived in the individual sensory experience and can bring people closer together at this specific location.

The new building is planned on an elevated site and on the edge of the village along a generous green space. The rural surroundings with a hilly landscape and the edge of the forest, as well as the proximity to the village and the town, form the context. The starting point for the architectural design is the examination of the location, as an intermediate space between village and countryside, and the geography with its gently sloping terrain. It is the existing fragility that needs to be absorbed and anchored at the same time. The structure is positioned in the middle of the plot and, together with four concrete elements arranged in a criss-cross pattern, the architecture is intended to express clarity and stability. A timber construction is clamped between the concrete elements. An interplay between closed and open façades completes the architectural idea of fragile and solid, light and heavy. Taken as a whole, the design contrasts lead to a sense of calm and naturalness.

The new building will be extended around a new main body, which naturally seems to hover over the existing building. Between the new and the existing structures, the greenhouse, which stands for innovation and sustainability, will be introduced as median layer. The interpolated mezzanine is visually drawn back, whereas the structure of the upper floor displays an accentuated exteriorized design. The upper floor assimilates the structure of the existing building, supporting itself on it. The concept is clearly legible and comprehensible, representing transparency and candor. Air pollution and smog are a severe problem in Singapore. Singapore is committed to the urbanistic purpose of connecting the natural, tropical environment with the tree population, for which reason the cityscape is dominated by street trees, greenspaces, parks and façade greenery. The blueprints for the Swiss chancellery aim to reflect this actual climate change policy and achieve a technical, architectural and innovative building. The greenhouse is the lungs of the building, stretching between the new and old sections of the structure, and ensures a natural air purification process through interior greenery. The air will be filtered through the greenhouse, which virtually serves as an oxygen reserve, and the plants spread the purified oxygen with greatly reduced levels of carbon dioxide through the ventilation systems in each area of the house. The severely polluted air will naturally be cleansed.

The pavilion lies at the base of a protective earthen wall that grows up out of the park landscape and holds the spatial concept in the center of which it defines a freely playable inner courtyard. Only this explosive expression of the great urban dynamism allows the space to reveal its versatility and playability. The simple transformation of the topography becomes the architecture. Fully embedded in the terrain, the pavilion is an integral part of the park. The round hill embodies constancy and continuity. Seasonally, the inner courtyard is given a light roof, a breathing social body. There it is heaviness and permanence, here it is lightness and inconstancy. In this way, the enclosed circular courtyard is expanded by the idea of a year-round playable courtyard. Almost invisible during the day, it exposes soft lantern light at night. The earth wall is opened towards the city with a puncture and fanned out towards the park in such a way that the green space is invited into the courtyard and, through its stepped form, serves as an inviting seat on the park shell.

An apartment building, built in the early 1900s in the Gundeldinger district of Basel, forms the starting point for the conversion project. The apartments on the lower three floors have been carefully renovated in the character of the existing building fabric. The top apartment has been converted into a spacious maisonette with the attic above. The extension moves within the existing roof slopes, only a dormer and a terrace to the courtyard form a spatial extension. There are different geometric basic forms such as the round skylight, the glass blocks, the built-in nested bookcases and the fish-bellied chimney, which in combination with the rich primary colors green and blue, refer to a recourse to the style of Art Nouveau at the beginning of the 20th century. Archetypal elements form the vocabulary of the design and, in the interplay of shapes and colors and light and shadow, lead to a playfulness and diversity of the space.

The new pavilion nestles thoughtfully on the hillside of the former garden of a spacious artist’s villa belonging to the Swiss artist Hans Erni, which was built around 1950 in the modern style. A curved concrete structure that merges at the front and supports the roof becomes a design feature. The solution allows for maximum cross-corner views to the northeast and southwest, each with a garden and a view of a park. Behind the arched structure is a staircase that leads to the roof garden. The curve arises from two contentual moments. On the one hand, the curve is taken from the drawings of the artist Hans Erni, in whose work movement and animal drawings play a major role, thus creating a strong connection to the history of the place and the man. On the other hand, the curve is somewhat imported, because it can be read as a fallen pillar of the Palacio Planalto by Oscar Niemeyer in Brasilia, also created in the 1960s. The form is legitimized in its content in many ways and is furthermore the most coherent architectural solution for bringing the loads together rather than being vertically borne at the corners, where the views would be disturbed. The curve is both a narrative moment and a maximally reduced formal approximation of the load transfer and gives the architecture a strong attraction, harmony and tension.

The new Museum of Bavarian History is positioned in a significant location on the Danube River in the middle of the city of Regensburg. The new museum building creates a poised impression, completing the previously unfinished city fragment. The working method lies in viewing the building volumes of the city as a single mass out of which empty spaces can be cut. The resulting figure-ground relationship between built and spatial forms leads to a textured structure of buildings and volumes. The main entrance is on the important Danube façade of the new building. Having entered the museum, the visitor arrives directly into a generous foyer. Attached to this, and arranged around the central courtyard, are spaces for temporary exhibitions or events. The ‘Bayernhimmel’ or Bavarian Sky is the final space and it creates the zenith of the exhibition. The basic form of the Bayernhimmel room is cuboid and it can therefore be flexibly used. Nonetheless, it possesses an important singularity, for the room is surrounded and accentuated by a further spatial level. This pared-back zone consists of two opposing staircases that lead to a common destination from where the visitor enjoys a wonderful view of the old city, the Danube and the cathedral. From the exterior, the opening in the façade appears as a fresh interpretation of a classical frieze. The opposing staircases both shift the height level and represent a sequence of interior to exterior, past to present. The city and its architecture and structure are understood as the theatre of daily life. The Bayernhimmel is a grandstand from which a view of our city stage is revealed, as well as the meeting point between the museum world within and the contemporary world outside.