RESIDENZA LE STELLE, LOCARNO, SWITZERLAND
younger have now largely been replaced by rather dull buildings – a great loss to the neighbourhood.”
So Buzzi was determined the design of the new Solduno buildings for which he was responsible would certainly not be dull. Buzzi Studio’s aim was to design something modern, yet still “merging with the fabric of the neighbourhood”. Fortunately, says Buzzi, the client shared that ambition and was “open to new ideas.”
It turns out that practicality was one driving force for the innovative brick cladding that was eventually developed. Buzzi explains: “The birth of these build- ings was very long, between five to seven years for various different reasons, and the requirements and specifications were chang- ing. We needed to find a solution to deal with these unpredictable changes.”
Inspiration for a wave-like brick facade
“We decided to make the changing requirements a quality. That’s when we came up with the idea of a wave-like brick facade. Normally, when building with brick you need to be very precise with your measurements but this would mean the coincidence between the brick and openings for windows didn’t have to be exact.” Inspiration also came from the Casa Beretta building adjacent to Residenza Le Stelle – a structure designed by influential local architect Rino Tami. “He was a pioneer of modern architecture and this building, from 1964, uses brick so we wanted to connect our building with it.” A third motivation, says Buzzi, was “to employ techniques that were very much 21st century”. “We knew of some research being done in Zurich by a company called ROB Technologies that was about enabling an architect to design a facade using 3D software. We felt this technique would say we are part of the present epoch. But then every architect in history wants to use the latest techniques.”
Built by robots
So, how did the cladding system actually come together? After the brick facades had been designed, the individual sand-coloured bricks – created by Swiss manufacturer Keller using Jura clay – were carefully glued together by robots to form panels. The panels were then fixed to the buildings onsite using stainless steel brackets and hooks. The final part of the process was to weave the panels together
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