Case Study – House de Mandrot-Roth – Alfred Roth, 1944
- Zürich
- The Mandrot House, was originally built by Alfred Roth for his friend Hélène Mandrot. The elderly woman was an important figure in the art world of the time as well as in the architecture movement and organiser of the CIAM.
- In the summer she would stay at her castle in la Sauraz and in the winters she would stay in the south of France. Because of WWII, she could no longer stay in the south of France and so Alfred built her a house in Zürich close to all her CIAM friends. The house was built in a very short time and was made almost completely out of wood.
- The floors are coated with aluminium foils, as to block „earth radiation“, which was believed to be harmful and originating from all sorts of underground phenomenas, such as ground water canals. As such the house was designed diagonally, because few parts of the plot contained „earth radiation“ and others did not.
Contributor: Gion von Albertini
