3 Attached Houses by PONT12 architectes in Lausanne, Switzerland

Project: 3 Attached Houses Architects: PONT12 architectesLocation: Lausanne, SwitzerlandArea: 7696 sq ftYear: 2020
Photographs by: Matthieu Gafsou

3 Attached Houses by PONT12 architectes

PONT12 architectes, a Swiss studio, designed the project of 3 attached houses in a residential area overlooking Lausanne. It was built instead of a villa from the 1950s, and the project aims to maximize the potential of the plot, resulting in just over 7500 square feet of luxurious modern living space.

The 3 attached houses replace a 1950s villa in a residential area overlooking Lausanne. The project maximizes the potential of the plot for dense construction while considering form and materials to integrate into a rural and green context.

Plan and section offsets reduce scale and enhance the domestic atmosphere of the complex. They create terraces that extend living spaces and increase orientation options, particularly a west-facing setback for the middle house.

Volume flexibility and facade composition catch attention, blurring traditional typological understanding of three attached houses. The typological originality lies elsewhere: the project rejects a regulated attic and distributes maximum buildable area across two more generous levels in favor of a panoramic flat roof.

Materials are left raw and minimized: exposed concrete inside, wood outside. The atmosphere and richness of the project come from the assembly and treatment of these materials: concrete walls, polished slabs with visible aggregates, carefully designed facade cladding that rethinks traditional vertical boarding.

These simple and radical solutions also follow energetic and structural coherence: active panels transfer heat efficiently, while the boarding design allowed carpenters to pre-assemble the entire facade and optimize disassembly on site.

–PONT12 architectes