Description

A generous plot and the immediately adjacent flat, undeveloped natural landscape inspired the architects to use a horizontal figure for this house, reaching out expansively. So the slice motif becomes the key to protruding roofs, long walls and free-standing external walls. Here an entrance courtyard, a seating area by the swimming pool and the garage intermesh as a result of their structural components with the carefully balanced external spaces and the countryside. Thus the designed spaces are developed and graded hierarchically: via the artificiality of an architecturally framed large entrance hall in the upper access storey with adjacent living room to the designed exterior space on various levels, and out into open nature.

The architects blend usable and outside spaces by causing large horizontal surfaces to intermesh, so that the lavish openings create an intense relationship between differentiated zones. Main entrance, hall and living area combine to form a central spatial axis relating to the horizon via large expanses of glass. The hall seems somewhat overlarge at first, but confirms the intention of spatial relationships aimed at making an impact from a distance. Dining and cooking are attached to living, but the parents’ bedroom and a guestroom are on the same level. The occupants wanted to have a sauna on the bottom floor, but were keen above all on accommodating the children’s rooms in combination with another multi-functional living area, so that it would be easy to turn them into a self-contained flat.

The stone courtyard on the bottom level defines the plot boundary, and its walls mark a clear notch in the terrain. On this level as well, living means both using and experiencing a designed interior space, and then a contained exterior space, followed by an ‘untamed’ one.

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