For the "Resonance Centre Peter Roth," Graber Pulver Architekt and Martina Hauser Architektin decided to stack the program across three levels due to the conditions of the triangular plot. The volume, defined by a diamond-shaped floor plan inscribed on the site, varies on each side and combines with the saddle-shaped roof, generating a distinctive and memorable form.
A skeleton of columns, beams, and individual girders was stiffened with wooden elements suspended in the middle at the level of the facade and roof to construct the building, which follows the principles of harmonic construction, where parts and forms can be related as if they were musical intervals.
"Resonance Centre Peter Roth" by Graber Pulver + Martina Hauser. Photograph by Ladina Bischof.
Project description by Graber Pulver + Martina Hauser
With its multi-layered program, the house, designed as a wooden building, offers orientation and protection and provides a vessel for occasions and exhibitions. The focus is on the exchange, the community and the mediation of the sound world of Peter Roth. These contents are echoed in the shape of the building, its independently constructive performance and the rhythmic façade image.
Architecture
The triangular plot with a six-meter transverse gradient in the Kurzone at the Hotel Alpenrose allowed a building area of a maximum of 200 square meters. The framework conditions led to a stacking of the program on three floors – an architectural triad – over a rhombus-shaped base area. A reception on the lower floor with reference to the hotel connects via a spacious staircase at the southern end of the building and via a sealing opening to the seminary floor above and the entrance from the Vordere Schwendistrasse.
A floor above it extends an exhibition space, which is spanned by a large rafter roof. A lift connects all three floors. The building received its specific volumetry through the diamond-shaped floor plan, which is inscribed in the terrain – different on all sides – and which, in combination with the wide-cantileng saddle roof, generates a distinctive and memorable figure. The façade is divided by a horizontal, outwardly stepped layering and thus expresses the three-partness of the program.
Construction
The building was built as a wooden stand building. The skeleton construction of individual columns, beams and rafters was stiffened with wooden elements suspended in between in the façade and roof level. The façade was rhythmized by posts and vertically covered with a simple deck slide screen via a slat applied floor by a floor to the prefabricated wall elements. The surfaces of the timber construction remained natural both inside and out. Saw-raw or planed spruce boards and three-layer slabs or stairs and floor surfaces in oak were used.
Proportion, Harmony, Resonance
It was a marginal remark by Peter Roth that, on the basis of the harmonic construction, the parts and shapes could be put in relation as if they were musical intervals. In ancient Greece, for example, the harmonic overtones were defined as integer multiples of the basic frequency (octave: 2:1, fifth: 3:2, quarters: 4:3 and so on), the same numerical ratios of the length, width and height mass of a building, a facade or a component were given a comparatively high level of attention in the architecture at that time.
We used the design in terms of play in the development of our design or in the clarification of the building geometry of integer measurement ratios. These were used in particular in checking the lateral ratios of the diamond-shaped floor plan figure and the inclination ratios of the cantilevered rafter roof, which together rewrite the resonance space. We were guided by the principles of harmonic architecture, which as a measure of length the «foot» (approx. 30 centimeters) as basic unit. The structure of the façade is also based on this specification – the building received its "sound."
