The prominent location of the richly traditional Dolder Waldhaus calls for a project that is sensitive in urban planning terms, while also architecturally self-assured. The composition of terrace and garden, plinth building, hotel and apartment building strives to achieve a balance between integration and a striking appearance. The crystalline form of the compact hotel tower is fractured at several places, reducing the mass of the volume when seen from nearby and far away. The typologically related apartment building on the one hand mediates to the scale of the adjoining district but is also a space-shaping counterpart to the high-rise building.

The lower plinth forms a platform on which the forecourt to the Dolder rack railway station and the hotel approach are located. From here you can directly access the hotel entrance level with the reception area and the bar. The lobby develops upwards into a dramatically tall atrium around which the entrances to the hotel rooms and apartments are grouped. A circulation figure is developed downwards that based on a spatial dramaturgy of constriction, breath and exaggerated spatial height.