Description

The unusual impression the house makes from the street arouses visitor’s curiosity. A rising concrete edge provides a roof for a white-rendered, single-storey building with a red cube on top. On approaching the main entrance, it becomes clear that the edge is part of a large roof slab with different inclines and separates the ground floor of a building in two sections from a third one above it. A bedroom area on the ground floor distances itself from the living area with attached kitchen by means of a courtyard. The living area faces the garden, and also the courtyard, with an extensive glass façade that can be opened up almost completely. The parent’s bedroom area is in the block-like section of the upper floor, separate in its redness. Dirk Alten refuses to commit to a particular style with this design.

A body of white rendering, a distorted run of concrete left in its raw state, glass facades with filigree construction elements and a timber cube clad in sheet metal produce an interplay of contradictory building elements as a deliberately staged ‘arrangement’. It is not just form that is used contradictorily, but above all space as well: conventional, huddled sleeping cells on the one hand, a living area delineated by only a few panes on the other hand, a firmly outlined, one-room container above.

Space is clearly defined, unambiguously open, belonging to both one part and the other. The effect of these opposite poles is enhanced by the rise and fall of the roof slab, which combines, but also divides, calms and excites. It diagonal line directs it towards the entrance, presses down then rises to the living area, then reverses the movement in the courtyard. This spatial and formal drama reflects a desire for living in an eventful space, but especially the designer’s temperament as well.

---

Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.