Gallery ︎︎︎
Layered Domesticity
Housing shaped by
depth, space, and use“Housing
must offer not solutions, but possibilities - spaces that allow residents to
regulate distance, closeness, and presence.”
Dietmar Leyk, principal and founder
This four-storey multi-family building is conceived as a framework for living, rather than a fixed residential object. It responds to contemporary domestic life as something layered and changeable, shaped over time rather than predefined.
Living does not begin at the façade. Recessed loggias, planted foregrounds, and filtering layers extend the domestic realm outward. These intermediate spaces allow residents to adjust their relationship to light, climate, and the public street. They are neither fully private nor public, but places where everyday life can unfold with ease and discretion.
The external filtering skin, executed in white matte powder-coated aluminium, acts as a soft, operable layer rather than a boundary. It does not determine use, but allows openness and retreat to be calibrated over time, in response to season, routine, and individual need. Privacy emerges through depth and layering, not through separation.
Beyond the individual building, the project understands housing quality as a quiet contribution to the transformation of Zurich’s periphery. Precision, durability, and spatial generosity are valued over formal expression or density alone.
The architecture remains calm and exact. A regular structural rhythm, restrained materials, and a consistent spatial order establish clarity and permanence. Within this framework, individual patterns of living can take place without visual noise or formal insistence.
Layered Domesticity understands housing not as an image, but as an experience over time, an architecture that supports living quietly, confidently, and on one’s own terms.
Zurich Periphery, Switzerland — Feasibility study