Duplex Architects, founded in 2007 in Zurich and with offices also in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, and, most recently, also in Paris, have gained an excellent reputation internationally for their designs of various scales and vast range of typologies.

This first monograph on Duplex Architects’ work in Germany and Switzerland offers a close look at their approach to housing design. Five projects in Switzerland are documented extensively through a wealth of images, plans, and visualizations and exemplify the firm’s position on urban planning, typology research, and materiality and demonstrate their utterly independent way of working.

Urban scale, search for new forms of communal living, the importance of community and a collaborative design process are at the core of Duplex Architects’ considerations in residential architecture.

Nele Dechmann’s text and Ludovic Balland’s photo essay both illuminate Duplex Architects’ work each in its own way. Further texts are contributed by the firm’s founding partners Anne Kaestle and Dan Schürch, as well as by other expert authors, who cast their own personal glance at the five projects featured in this book.

With contributions by Hubertus Adam, Marc Angélil, Nele Dechmann, Anne Kaestle, Andreas Ruby, Caspar Schärer, Dan Schürch, Philip Ursprung, Niklas Maak and Günther Vogt. Photographs by Mathilde Agius, Ludovic Balland, Lars-Ole Bastar, Roxana Rios, Alexander Rosenkranz and Mihai Sovaiala.

Ludovic Balland lives and works in Basel as a graphic designer specializing in entire editorial concepts. He is the editor and photographer of American Readers at Home (2018) and its sequel, American Readers at Home – New Cut (2020), both published by Scheidegger & Spiess.

Nele Dechmann is a Zurich-based freelance architect. Her focus as practicing architect and theorist is on new forms of housing. Her book Costa Smeralda about the legendary holiday resort on Sardinia was published by Park Books in 2018.