Dwellings in Valendas, Switzerland.

The free-standing house is the focus of growing criticism in the context of a planet threatened by climate change and other ecological imbalances. The problem is that free-standing homes consume too many resources, and Valendas, a small village on the right bank of the Rhine Gorge, thinks that is no longer acceptable. The village wanted an alternative form of housing.

It is not that we believe that this building, designed to optimise energy use, signals a useful and sustainable path towards a more sensitive relationship with our planet. Our approach is different. We want to encourage people to relate: to the trees and the wind, to the heat and the cold, and to our neighbours as well. This housing complex aspires to this end, to improve these relationships, and that is why the building and the dwellings are unfettered by homogenising immobility. The rooms will not only be either warm or cold, on or off. A dwelling can change, its users as well. An idea accompanied us throughout the project: I live with the house and the house lives with me.

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