Planning permission has been granted for the construction of two timber-framed apartment blocks on the outskirts of Lucerne.
The buildings of the Eggenhof farmstead on the outskirts of Lucerne, represent the agricultural history of the place, where the scale of buildings and fields were determined by the families that worked the land. Adjacent modernist housing developments, meanwhile, adhere to the rules of solar orientation and have an abstract relationship to the land. Caruso St John’s project seeks to protect the quality of the Eggenhof and exploit the qualities of the site, putting in place a spatial structure that resists the tendency for places such as this to become absorbed into the urban agglomeration.
The main apartment building shares something of the modernist abstraction but its relationship to the land and to the surrounding existing buildings is intended to be precise and purposeful. The simple volume makes a strong relationship to its setting and provides a calm backdrop to the Hof and its arrangement permits the formation of a substantial new landscape that further mediates between the surrounding settlements. Two smaller apartment buildings complete the scheme and form an ensemble with the existing structures of the Hof.
The verandas of the principal façades create a datum against which one can read the rolling topography of the site and the consistent eave is like a horizon that emphasises the profile of the surrounding mountains. The buildings’ façades have a depth and complexity that relates to their setting. The main structure is concrete, with the outer façades and verandas made in timber and painted in a palette of colours that relate to the diversity of the surrounding landscape.
_
