Architecture studio DF_DC has designed a concrete apartment block overlooking Lake Lugano in the south of Switzerland that has a concrete exoskeleton so that the interior spaces are "free to change over time".
Named after its street, Via Carona 6 contains 14 private-rental apartments that are shielded from the road by a concrete wall that was informed by the architecture of the 14th-century Pisa Baptistery.
Top: Via Carona 6 by DF_DC. Above: the building is located beside a rail track
Built on a Swiss hillside the five-storey building is located alongside a winding road and above a railway track.
DF_DF designed the block in response to its site with its massing organised in a way that did not obstruct neighbouring views of the lake, a blank wall facing the road and large openings facing towards the lake. The design has a curved form
The design of its concrete street facade follows the curved topography of the road and was informed by largely blank walls found in Romanesque architecture and at the Pisa Baptistery.
It is made up of pitched, bush-hammered panels that are slotted within a gridded exoskeleton and punctuated only by the small entrance.
The studio used the expressive quality of bush-hammered concrete as decoration
"Following the classic tradition and Pisa Baptistery, the blind rear facade relies on the expressive qualities of concrete as ornament," said DF_DC director Diego Calderon.
"The walls are cast in a curve and with a five-deg...