A key aim of the design and the clients' wish was a forward-looking approach to materials and a building integrated into its surroundings.
A generous green roof, a landscape cut out and folded up, is the largest space-defining element of the house. The lightweight timber construction with a ventilated metal façade and large glass elements form the rest of the outer skin. Where the solid terrace plateau meets the edge of the terrain it adapts to the topography only partially, so the building rises out of the ground on its north and west sides.
The vegetation layer removed during excavation was given back to the landscape on the roof.
The heart of the house is the ground-level living room, up to five metres high in places, from which all rooms, the garden and the terrace plateau with the pool are reached. As a structurally screened space, the tent-like sleeping and rest area is on the upper floor and is connected to the roof terrace through a cut in the green roof. Rooms and surfaces flow into one another – be it the three-sided open fireplace between living room and study, which grows out of the built-in wall unit and lets you look through the firebox into the study, or the concrete floor and the soffit of the roof, both of which continue from inside to outside through the frameless glass façade. These outward-flowing transitions emphasise once more the inclusion of nature and the surroundings.
The entire structure of the house is lightweight timber-frame construction, combined with partly exposed steelwork. The ground slab is solid concrete and is also the finished, polished and waxed floor surface. It also acts as thermal mass, balancing the lightweight roof structure. The indoor climate is also regulated by the large green-roof area, which in the south-west acts as structural sun and heat protection, helped by its thick vegetation layer. The vertical façade is ventilated, with a natural-aluminium corrugated-sheet façade hung on a timber structure.
The use of untreated wood as a building material for parts of the interior fit-out, raw untreated corrugated aluminium for the façade, and a planted roof covering underlines the building's sustainable and efficient concept.
