Rötiboden lies above the historical town center of Wädenswil. Once largely given over to farming, over recent years the area has developed through a process of building densification into a residential quarter. One of the last remaining building plots, a long, thin hillside site, now accommodates a scheme comprising a row of terraced houses. The aim of this new development was to provide high-quality housing and foster an ethos of collective living.

The two buildings, each containing eleven differently sized, three-story homes, are set at a slight angle to one another and so frame a generous intermediate space that forms the communal heart of the development. A retaining wall defines a long, tree-lined forecourt, while a stepped floor slab running between garden and courtyard levels takes full advantage of the views out over Lake Zürich and gives the courtyard-facing rooms on the lake side an exceptional ceiling height of 3.75 meters.

The load-bearing structure is of solid construction with concrete slabs and bulkhead-style partition walls separating the individual units. The basic structure of the houses is designed with the load-bearing walls arranged perpendicular to the contour of the hillside and a flexible floor plan between the bulkheads. Horizontal stability is ensured firstly by the bulkhead walls and secondly by the staircases and lift cores. The foundations are of conventional design with a continuous base slab and deeper sections beneath concentrated loads. As a result of the geometry of the buildings, their proximity to the plot boundary and the new retaining wall on Rötibodenstrasse, the southern and eastern sides of the foundation pit had to be secured using a soil nail wall.

The scheme is characterized both by its single-skin walls of high-quality fair-faced concrete and its jointless construction method. The way the buildings are set back into the slope, the touches of color, the metal spiral staircases inside the homes and the external access to the open roof space all give the development a distinct identity and a particular charm that is further enhanced by the landscaping.