Description

Urban context

This four-story, rhythmically staggered apartment house with twelve units and the
open spaces accompanying the building occupy nearly the entire 790-square-meter
lot. Located in an area of spread-out low buildings, on the street side the
building has a perforated metal structure at a distance of several meters as a
kind of translucent shell that acts as a buffer. Between this suspended screen
and the modulated building facade lies a deep access zone. The apartments are
accessed via galleries pulled away from the main volume.

Ground-floor zone

Diverse spatial transitions between private, semiprivate, and public space
characterize this project. The screened-off access zone has another strip of
concrete and grass between it and the street. To the side of it a low canopy
leads residents behind the seemingly off-putting metal curtain into an ambiguous
interim zone that recalls the engawa of the traditional Japanese house – a zone
without a clearly defined boundary between private and common space. This
results in a heterogeneous environment being blocked off and a separate ambience
being created. The translucent layer filters the public street space. It
modulates the light that enters but also protects the interior from eyes
outside.

Building structure

Four apartments on each of three floors are accessed via a steel stairway,
footbridges, and bridges connected to the latter. The floor plan is determined
by a fixed wing with the bathroom and kitchen, around which the living spaces
are organized in a variety of ways. Each unit is assigned private, protected
open areas. The ground-floor units have small fenced-in garden areas; the
apartments on the second floor have partially covered loggias placed at an
angle; and the maisonettes on the third and fourth floors have narrow projecting
balconies and spacious roof terraces.

Facade

The access gallery defines the boundary to urban space in a way that is seemingly
off-putting, but nevertheless as a permeable zone it creates a fluid transition.
The perforated metal screen prevents those nearby from looking in, while placing
an abstract filter on the outside of the building. It produces an atmospheric
play of light and shadows in the space in between. The interiors themselves
receive consistent, nuanced light. On the garden side, the brilliantly white,
spatially modulated facade of the rhythmically staggered volume produces a
sculptural effect, which is reinforced further by the deft handling of the
horizontal ribbon windows around the corners and the small, accentuated
balconies of exposed concrete.

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Originally published in: Ulrike Wietzorrek, Housing+: On Thresholds, Transitions, and Transparencies, Birkhäuser, 2014.