With the upcoming renovation of the main architecture building, HIL on the Hönggerberg campus and the ever-growing number of architecture students at ETH comes the need for a new building housing the ateliers.
Our proposal for that building is located at the Albert-Einstein Strasse behind the HIL building and aligns with the orthogonal grid of the surrounding buildings. A generous square framed by the HIL building and the surrounding student housing buildings will become the entrance to the new atelier building.
Flanked by a cafe and the administrative offices one enters the central hall through a wide stair from the square. The offices for the chairs are located on the side of the central hall with direct access to covered exterior spaces. At the end of the central hall, ramps lead up to the upper and lower floors. Along the ramps are spaces that can be used for critiques, as workspaces or for exhibitions.
The studio space on the upper floor surrounds the central hall and has a roof that admits natural light. The ceiling structure is a regular, triangular grid of glulam spruce wood beams. Inside the triangular openings are pneumatic ETFE cushions, which transmit diffuse daylight that illuminates the space.
The regular span of the ceiling beams is 6.4 meters. Over the central hall, this increases to 12.7 meters and the beam cross sections increase accordingly. The vertical loads are transferred through columns with fixed supports into the concrete base plate and large trusses in the facade transfer the horizontal loads and the weight of the overhang to the foundations. The column spacing decreases under the studio spaces to carry the extra loads of the intermediate floor. The connections are done using standard metal plate connections.
Through maximization of natural ventilation, self-shading of the building and a variable shading system to control the solar gains through the roof the HVAC requirements are kept to a minimum.
