32 housing units for border guards
The new building with 32 apartments is situated on the outskirts of Geneva on a gentle south-facing slope. The building is inhabited by custom officers with an irregular daily routine and the noise pollution due to its proximity to the motorway and airport entails high user-specific soundproofing requirements. The new building’s special floor plan emerges in the wake of this issue, based on an individual apartment whose living space faces two or three sides. Thus giving the resident the advantage that they always have a choice of which direction they want to face.
The polygonal building volume avoids us having to turn our backs on the existing buildings and integrates them into the new logic of the communal outdoor spaces. The floor plan’s efficient organisation of space, which always organises three apartments around a central circulation area, allows us to compensate for the relatively large façade and create economical apartments. The organic floor plan that looks wild at first glance is structured extremely rationally and only uses two angles. Each room in the building has at least three easily furnishable right angles while any remaining difficult to use areas are reduced to an absolute minimum.
