The park surrounding Villa Schwarz is an important recreation space for people living on the outskirts of Basel. On this site the architects interpreted the idea of a “villa” not as a free-standing single-family house, but as an eight-storey housing block with 31 apartments. The idea of creating an “arborial structure” was important in the design. Despite its size and volume, there is no sense of any great mass, thanks to a double-angled ground plan and the intricacy and diversity in the facade design. Built to an irregular grid, the concrete support frame for the facades is stained dark brown. The trees in the park are reflected in the storey-high windows, enhancing the integrating effect. The external blinds angle out slightly towards the bottom, thus emphasising the sculptural nature of the building volume. The self-supporting facade is a mix of both precast components and in-situ concrete. It is connected to the floor slabs only on the narrow sides. The ground floor is designed as a parterre. At its base the structure is set back slightly, this distinctive narrowing giving the building the appearance of floating above the ground.