Brühlmatt, Urdorf

The project
Previously, three individual apartment buildings stood in place of the new Brühlmatt apartment building in the center of Urdorf near Zurich. However, the buildings, which were constructed in 1961, were getting on in years and needed to be replaced. Renovation would have been too expensive. The client, the Allgemeine Baugenossenschaft Urdorf (ABU), wanted to build in a cost-conscious manner without compromising on living comfort and sustainability. The new Brühlmatt MFA was realized as an elongated, three-part building. The apartment floor plans are flexible to appeal to different generations. The non-load-bearing interior walls can be moved, allowing two 2.5-room apartments to be converted into a 5-room apartment, for example.

The construction
The new apartment building is a hybrid construction: Interior load-bearing walls and floor slabs are made of reinforced concrete, while the exterior walls were constructed with prefabricated load-bearing timber elements. The glulam columns are integrated into the exterior wall elements and support the concrete floors. This construction method has many advantages. Among other things, the erection of the timber elements could be carried out parallel to the solid construction, thus eliminating the need for subsequent relocation of the elements behind the facade scaffolding.

The challenge
The arbors, through which the 32 apartments are accessed, were not allowed to stand directly in front of the combustible wooden facade cladding. In order to avoid any danger from the combustible cladding in the event of a fire, the arcades were constructed slightly offset from the residential building. This allows people to escape safely from the building even in the event of a fire.