With offices in Zürich, Barcelona and Majorca, the work of Gus Wüstemann Architects is a constant evolution between matter and context. From the strong heritage of timber and concrete construction in Switzerland, to the blurry boundaries of inside and outside found in Mediterranean architecture, Gus' work always put an emphasis on the core values of the local construction and craftsmanship, mixed with the cross learnings of working across different regions.
Currently working on projects such as A Barn, for Demna’s Atelier and Loïc’s Studio, and a mixed use hybrid concrete/timber in Feldmeilen, along with several residential projects in Italy and the Balearic Islands, Wüstemann's architecture can be seen as archetypical, essential or even raw. The interiors are a direct expression of these core concepts, with a brut aesthetic.
In the House Z22 and Warehouse F88 project in Zürich, a concrete topography acts as an extension of the 170 year old stone construction to accommodate new ways of living, where the secondary elements (railings, fixtures) are simple, but designed in detail, resulting in spaces with a unique character.
A similar methodology is used in the Affordable Housing in Langgrütstrasse. "The resources are limited. How can you provide quality living space with less resources in a progressive way? So we think social housing or affordable housing doesn't have to be less attractive or different. The space can be as strong. So in that particular project, it was to just build a raw house and the raw house was, in the end, the house. So we forgot a lot of things that we normally put as well, less technical installations, less details, less interiors. So that's how we could keep the costs low. But we went into the spaces themselves. And I think there is where we can see some progression to create low budget but high quality living spaces."
The learnings from working in the Mediterranean context were useful to give more under these constraints. "[...] the Mediterranean lifestyle it is totally coming into our architecture. How you treat public space in the sense that the private space always expands to the semi-private spaces, which is in Barcelona the front of your house. So there's many options where you actually can combine the public space with the private space. Therefore you need less private surface for yourself in your flat. And the same concepts we apply here [in Switzerland]. For example, in the affordable housing we did at Langgrütstrasse, in these open spaces that are actually small by surface. Then there's a shared roof terrace. There's a shared garden. All these elements come from the Mediterranean experience we had in Barcelona and the Balearics, of course."
For Wüstemann the use of wood is crucial, "a more sustainable material, if we use it right", and plays an important role in the Pavilion House, where his search for the core minimum finds an expressive result. "It's almost about the absence of residential connotations. In the end, the pavilion house is supposed to be just a roof and such a simple roof, like a barn roof. So there's nothing unnecessary there to create this roof. And underneath you just live and you get this kind of free feeling, by the absence of residential connotations. The house is built in the way that under the roof there is only half the house, let's say there are windows and there are installations. The other part of the house is just an outside space. So in the summer you can open those sliding windows and the house doubles within the season. And in the winter, you go further inside and you're on the roof, on the half of the roof. But the simplicity and kind of the typology that is just the barn, just the roof, for us is very important that hasn't got the sense of a villa or something expensive, or it just ruins everything."
