View is about floor, façade and the future
The view from a flat depends on three things: the floor, the façade and what gets built in front of the window over the next few years. At a viewing, you see a flat on one day. What you don’t see: the view from the floor above, which the sales dossier describes for the penthouse floor, or the building zone on the meadow opposite, which will have a block of flats on it in three years.
Panoramic view from the 3D model
SunPlot shows the surroundings of an address in 3D, built from the terrain model, the building models with roof shapes and the trees from the laser point cloud. This produces the panoramic view: the view from every façade and every floor in all directions, with the mountains on the horizon and their names. You can see which peaks are visible from the balcony, where the neighbour blocks the view and whether the penthouse floor sees the lake that the ground floor does not.
What the report shows about the view
- View from the façades, automatically for the top floor and for any other floor on request.
- Visible mountains with names and distance, as a rotatable panoramic view.
- Building zones in the surroundings: where building is allowed opposite, and how high the zone is classified.
- Time travel through aerial photos since the 1920s: how the surroundings have developed.
The future of the view: reading building zones
Switzerland’s building zones are available in harmonised form from the Federal Office for Spatial Development. They show whether an area is a residential zone, mixed zone, work zone or agricultural land. For the view, this means: a meadow in a residential zone is building land, only a meadow for the time being. A meadow in an agricultural zone usually remains free. What may be built in a zone, how high and how densely, is set out in the municipality’s building regulations. For pending building applications, it helps to look at the official gazette and pay a visit to the building authority.
Short answers
Can I see the view from a flat before buying it?
Yes. SunPlot calculates the panoramic view from every façade and floor using the 3D model of Switzerland, with the visible mountains and their names. This way you can also see the view from floors you cannot visit.
How do I find out whether the view could be blocked by new buildings?
Through the building zones: an area in a residential or mixed zone is building land; an area in an agricultural zone usually remains free. The report shows the building zones in the surroundings. Pending building applications are published in the municipality’s official gazette.
Are trees taken into account in the view?
Yes. The trees come from swisstopo’s laser point cloud and stand in the 3D model at their actual height. Deciduous trees that are bare in winter are represented in their summer state.