Description
The clients requested a house with four compact rental units, designed in a manner that would also allow for entirely different floor plan configurations – one of the potential scenarios being the use as a multigenerational home. By virtue of their design and placement, the two single-loaded staircases function as an interface for various combinations: all areas adjoining the stairs – the apartments on the upper and lower levels, the units to the right and left as well as the landings – can be linked.
The original layout comprises four small, compact yet open apartments, each with a private entrance. The apartment on the lower level of the site (garden apartment) and the attic story are accessed via separate sets of stairs. When the partition wall between bathrooms and stairwell is taken out, the resulting layout is an apartment that covers the entire ground floor with an open-plan eat-in kitchen and living area to one side, playroom and bedrooms to the other side.
If, on the other hand, the partition wall between the bottom of the stairs and one adjoining apartment is opened up on the street elevation, the west-facing unit is combined with the attic story, and the east-facing unit with the garden unit. If the apartments on the ground floor are connected on both sides (front and rear), the result is a multigenerational home linked across all three levels with various private areas as well as a generous open living space on either side of the ground-floor stairs.
Drawings
Photos
Exterior view, garden side
Originally published in: Oliver Heckmann, Friederike Schneider (eds.), Floor Plan Manual Housing, fourth revised and expanded edition, Birkhäuser, 2011.