SWHome Housing System

Based on Richter & Dahl Rocha’s winning project for the first “Europan” competition on housing (1988–89), the SWHome® concept emerged in response to the building crisis of the 1990s. Richter & Dahl Rocha’s aim was to promote a modular, flexible, and easily convertible “do-it-yourself” type of single-family housing, but given social and economic forces, this led to a system applicable to collective living, the SWHome® Housing System. SWHome® explored themes that have predominated recent architectural debates, including the question of how to reconcile the desire for open-plan dwellings that allow inhabitants to express their individual lifestyles with the standardization and industrialization that dominate contemporary construction practices. The development of viable solutions involved going beyond the essential architectural and technical concerns and literally redefining the roles played by inhabitants, architects, engineers, material suppliers, builders, and developers. The architects collaborated with contractors to reflect on key issues and to generate proposals addressing alternative modes of building for new ways of living. SWHome® also instigated reflection on issues that led to better understanding of how standardized production and commercial distribution can facilitate not just the “bottom line,” but optimum housing construction. The notion of “flexibility” was at the forefront of the development of the SWHome® apartment typology. Inside the volume of each apartment, structural elements were carefully positioned, while mechanical systems and conduits of all kinds were integrated into party walls, allowing for partitions and floors to be modified at will. Each unit thus has the capacity to evolve over time as interior spaces are transformed and adapted to the changing needs of inhabitants. The horizontal and vertical network of exterior circulation allows for modular elements to be easily reconfigured, making it possible for diverse architectural and urban patterns to emerge from the deployment of a single construction system, while a wide range of cladding materials express the individual character of each housing unit. Among the few SWHome experiments documented herewhith, the Twin Villas in the Lausanne suburb of Chailly are a particularly interesting example of how the system can be applied to affortable multi-family housing.