Reinert House

Klaus-Peter Gast

Description

The design by architects Becher + Rottkamp reverts to two classical patterns: the free-standing detached house on a large plot and the language of early 20th century Modernism. Hence the simple, abstract rectangular block with large apertures on the ground floor on the garden side and smaller windows on the upper floor and in the entrance façade clearly indicates use and the distribution of functions. A long ‘tongue’ stretches out to visitors as an access pedestal. On the street side they find an almost completely closed and thus screening façade. On the top floor the ground plan structure of staircase, three bedrooms, bathroom and study is symmetrical, whereas the ground floor, apart from the separate access area, displays a generously diagonal ‘through-flow’ living, dining and cooking area. Dissolving the wall into a glazed corner permits diagonal orientation to the garden and extends the room into the green area.

This cube with its neo-traditional façade in handmade Wittmund peat-fired clinker brick stands out among the anonymous gable-roof houses in the village, but there is one extraordinary element that gives the house its truly individual quality and its identity: the building is detached from the ground. This fact is emphasized by the fact that it protrudes on the slight downward slope of the plot at the corner of the living-room window, probably because it is close to the roots of old lime-trees. But this measure does not just make the living room into a floating viewing platform, the block itself is ‘raised’ to the status of artefact. The elevated sharp brick edge of the floorline shows the border with the base, which is part of the ground. People coming into the house experience this ‘uplift’ as soon as they confront the long entrance pedestal, which is to be interpreted as a preparatory gesture, setting the mood.