Article taken from A&B issue 7-8|23
Beauty, goodness, sustainability—are these values still relevant? What are the biggest design challenges of single-family house architecture today?
The house was built for the families of two brothers—its form is the result of pragmatic and very precise answers to their needs and possibilities—as a result, it becomes a formal abstraction of their mutual relationship
Photo: Christoffer Joergensen © Piotr Brzoza
The qualities mentioned in the question refer to different categories and I find it difficult to treat them summarily. Beauty is an aesthetic, or subjective, concept. When I was studying, it was a forbidden word for young architects, today I think not quite rightly. Architecture, beyond the realm of concepts, is ultimately a physical creation, and thus is also judged in the category of beauty. On the other hand, I am still left with the reflex, I think rightly so, not to consider beauty as a variable in design work, leaning instead towards the notion of „beautiful use” created almost a century ago by Bruno Taut.
Heizenholz two-family house Zurich, Switzerland | proj.: Piotr Brzoza, cooperation Gunz & Künzle Architekten
Photo: Christoffer Joergensen © Piotr Brzoza
Goodness is an ethical category—only in extreme cases involving architecture—so let me change this concept to quality and thus link it to sustainability. For both are, at the end of the day, technical criteria for which a pragmatic argumentation is possible. The importance of sustainability and quality in architecture is again growing with the increasing awareness of the climate crisis—the longer the places and things created serve, the smaller the annual carbon footprint associated with their creation.
Heizenholz two-family house Zurich, Switzerland | design: Piotr Brzoza, collaboration Gunz & Künzle Architekten
Photo: Christoffer Joergensen © Piotr Brzoza
A single-family home, unlike an apartment, which is a space created for an anonymous viewer, is—or at least I think it should be—an individual place, designed around and for its owners. I think the key here is not so much for investors to articulate their wishes, but for designers to understand the essence of their underlying needs. Only in this way is the project likely to become unique—not through the architect's search for originality, but through the unique nature of the personalities for whom it was created.
Heizenholz two-family house Zurich, Switzerland | proj.: Piotr Brzoza, cooperation Gunz & Künzle Architekten
Photo: Christoffer Joergensen © Piotr Brzoza
