Description
This family home on the outskirts of Berlin stands among conventional gable-roof houses, and so its cubic appearance and homogeneous, horizontal timber cladding, an unusual façade material in this context, come as something of a surprise. The plot is generous in size, with mature trees. The architects placed two right-angles on it, disposed in response to the diagonal of the adjacent road. Access to the strictly orthogonal figure is in the middle, with the dining area behind a small entrance zone, which also accommodates the garage door. The central, almost dominant position of the dining table identifies the special part this room plays in the overall context. This is where people come together, this is the central communication area, with adjacent kitchen and utility room.
The living room, which is not unduly large, and almost separate, thrusts into the garden. But there is another living room on the top floor: between the bedroom and bathroom area with sauna is the ‘living hall’, a living room and study with the stairs running into it. This house is lived in ‘doubly’: there is no floor that is exclusively for sleeping, unused during the day. Fluid transitions, unusual spatial dispositions and innovative form are the keys to its character. By choosing a timber façade and aluminium windows flush on the outside the architects are going back to one of their practice’s tried-and-tested design patterns whose simplicity in terms of concept and materials had already proved convincing.
Drawings
Site plan
Axonometric diagram with two offset living areas one above the other
Ground floor with main entrance from the street, garage, central dining area with attached kitchen and living room leading to the garden
Second floor with bedrooms and terrace, bathroom and ‘living hall´
Photos
Exterior view from the garden
Interior view ´living hall´ upstairs
Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.