House Unimog

The unusual task and the difficult building site was at one hand a big challenge but on the other a big potential. The owner requested a workshop for his Unimog and a small residential unit. The site is located directly next to a street with heavy traffic and is surrounded by small private houses and farm buildings. A crucial parameter was the very tight cost frame.
The concept was to stack the two different uses on top of each other in order to minimize the footprint on the site and to orient the living rooms from the street towards the landscape. The result is a vertically developed house. The variation of the two different uses reflects itself through the facade: The lower part of the workshop is cladded with translucend polycarbonate elements. The workspace is filled with filtered natural light during the daytime, and turns at night into a light box which glows into the neighborhood. The living space presents itself with its anthracite facade as a monolithic volume. Precise set windows and a generous south oriented loggia enables beautiful views into the surrounding landscape. The chosen materials for the facade and inside the building underlines the pragmatic and reduced design concept: a house which is rather located in the typology of a rational farmhouse or of a workshop than a classical residential house.