Terrace housing, Meilen, Switzerland

Stepped buildings are habitable rostrums – they serve as the perfect panorama setting. Facing mainly in one direction, they consist of a terrace, a glazed panorama side and a building volume that is buried in the slope. Stepped buildings are implants in two respects: their volume is buried into the slope and they have a mediterranean flair untypical of the area in which they are built.

These characteristics, which are greatly valued, have been reduced here to their basic components. The building has been fitted into the steep site as a severe, constructed raw concrete volume. A relationship between the building and the outside space has been kept to a minimum in order to emphasise the implant-like nature of the building, and is only visible on the terraces; the greenery that surrounds the building seamlessly becomes part of the adjoining meadow and vineyard. The stairway providing access to the volume leads down the slope like a ravine, indicating the location of the otherwise invisible building. The carport at the rear of the building and the entrance next to it has been painted black. In this way, the throughway zone is given an abstract character, and is compressed so that the panorama on the side facing the lake is emphasised even more strongly.