Architects · Zürich · since 2012
Atelier Sorne is eleven architects in Zürich. Since 2012 we have built housing, schools and places of work across Switzerland and southern Germany, for cooperatives, municipalities and owners who think in decades.
See all fourteen projects11
Architects in one room
2012
Founded in Zürich
14
Projects, nine of them built
6
Projects at a time, at most
It is the only way all eleven of us can know every building. Five are in hand. The sixth place opens in spring 2027.
We take the commissions where a building is used every day by people who did not choose its architect.
Every project is photographed the same way: one wall, its most important opening, and whoever happens to be using it.
All
14
Housing
3
Education
3
Workspace
3
Culture
3
Landscape
2
Built
On site
Design
Competition
01
Built
Winterthur
·
Housing
·
2021
02
Built
Uster
·
Education
·
2023
03
Built
Schaffhausen
·
Workspace
·
2019
04
Built
Konstanz
·
Landscape
·
2022
05
Built
Küsnacht
·
Housing
·
2018
06
On site
Freiburg im Breisgau
·
Culture
·
2028
07
Built
Zürich
·
Workspace
·
2024
08
Built
Aarau
·
Education
·
2020
09
Built
Ravensburg
·
Culture
·
2017
10
On site
Basel
·
Culture
·
2027
11
Design
Friedrichshafen
·
Workspace
·
2029
12
Design
St. Gallen
·
Education
·
2028
13
Competition
Baden
·
Housing
·
2030
14
Built
Rapperswil
·
Landscape
·
2016
15
Number fifteen could be yours.
Start a project →
Approach · three principles, seven stages
01
The most sustainable square metre is the one you do not build. Every commission starts with what can stay, what can be shared and what can be left out.
02
What holds the building up is what you see. Timber reads as timber, concrete as concrete, and nothing is clad to look like something else.
03
We draw rooms that can change their use without changing their walls: generous heights, daylight from two sides, services you can reach.
Studio
We work on the second floor of a former print shop in Zürich West. Partners draw. Everyone goes to site. Every project has a card model you can pick up, because clients understand a model faster than a plan.
We take commissions from housing cooperatives, municipalities and private owners, and we enter two competitions a year. We do not do interiors without the building, and we do not design what we would not want to maintain.
Seven of the eleven
Select a portrait
Clients
Sample quotes for this demo
“In week three they told us the site could not carry a fourth floor. It saved us two years and a great deal of money.”
Board member · Housing cooperative, 46 flats
What we learn on site and after handover, written down four times a year.
Careers · one open position
Project architect, housing. You lead a cooperative housing project from concept design to handover, with a team of three and a partner who answers the phone.
Workload
80–100 %
Where
Zürich, two site days a week
Start
March 2027
You bring
Five years of practice, one finished timber building, fluent German
Yes, when they are used every day. The pavilion on the lake has three rooms. We do not take interiors without the building around them.
Always. Every stage ends with a finished piece of work that you own and can take elsewhere: a study, a brief, a model, a set of drawings.
A fixed fee, agreed before we start and based on four to eight weeks of work. You know the number before you sign anything.
Rarely. We want to reach every site in a morning and be home for dinner, because buildings are finished on site and not on screen.
Spring 2027. If your project cannot wait, write anyway and we will suggest two practices we trust.
Fill in the gaps. We read every brief on Monday morning and reply within five working days, also when the answer is that you should not build.
