urban a(r)mor, frankfurt/m

single family house, passive energy standard, designed to fill a gap in the city

The unusual location of the site - on a forgotten fleck of the city, between a motel and a villa - required special attention to the character of the building.  The city administration required that the house have the traditional roof form of a house.  We chose to interpret this form using a more sculptural approach:  Particular elements of the house are either cut out (roof terrace) or pushed out (kitchen, wardrobe and living room shelf) to not only provide extra space and light for the interiors, but also to reveal the materiality of the wood construction.  It is a wood house, with exposed wooden ceilings and it is constructed using a combination of post and beam and wood frame construction.  The clients wanted the warmth of exposed wood on the inside, but given the urban environment, an exterior wood panel facade seemed inappropriate.  As a result it was decided to use exterior cladding as a hard shell which protects the wooden construction and at the same time provides a contrast allowing the warmth of the wooden material to be emphasized.