Garagen in Herdern | Peter Kunz

The client for a single-family home built by Peter Kunz in 1994 high above the Thur plain wanted more room for his car collection. He therefore bought a precipitous lot below the house at a road junction. Combining the idea of putting up a series of prefabricated garages on the terrain and the collector’s pride of ownership resulted in the solution that was realised: five concrete cubes, each half buried, gazing into the distance. Four of them serve as a light source and “shop window” for the space concealed behind them. The fifth is the entrance with a sliding gate inside it. The garage interior is anything but a pure utility space: dark cast concrete floor, irregularly spaced tubular lamps, and above all the natural light shining in make the room into something special. In the back, a hidden stairway leads to the street above. The five precisely placed concrete cubes protruding from the overgrown slope recall Minimal Art installations. Decorating their glass faces are inconspicuous inscriptions by the artist Oliver Kühn: verses on the relationship between the automobile and man.