Monte bre Housing

Lugano, Switzerland

2014

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Ways of Living

This is an exploration and study analysis of the exclusive and specific issues bound up with collective housing. On the slopes of Monte Bré, a site location was selected along the Funicular railway and the objective was to design a mid-sized collective housing development.

We studied different co-operative housing models to explore the theme of “negotiated space” and were asked to develop a value system and philosophical base for the development of the theme “ways of living”, with flexibility to cater for diverse social groupings.

The allocated site felt like an old garden with a natural water stream running on its edge, and my first reaction was to try to preserve this
“garden” state as much as possible. Thus, as a building strategy, my proposal was to build on the edge of the site where the water stream was, and to preserve the rest of the land as cultivated gardens.

The Roman Aqueduct was used as a reference for building a narrow piece of infrastructure on site where the water stream would be running on top of the roof, instead of the ground. As a result, a natural water supply would be available from the roof to the rest of the building, and a gray water recycling system would be developed