Clear, bright and open rooms and a connection to the outdoors - that was what the owners of a detached house in Sankt Augustin wanted. They also wanted the house to be flexible enough to allow them to live on one floor in old age. The architects Enck-Oswald from Cologne, who were commissioned with the planning, developed a new two-storey building that creates a differentiated living area by shifting its two structures, which opens up generously to the garden.

The very mixed neighboring buildings, both in terms of building lines and design, made it almost impossible to develop references to an existing urban situation in the building design. The architects therefore decided to respond to the heterogeneous surroundings with the greatest possible clarity: the two-storey, cubic volume is made up of two ground-floor structures that are offset from each other. The long, single-flight staircase is centrally located where the two meet. At the same time, the two structures are interlocked by the upper floor in such a way that the cantilevering creates a roof for the street-side entrance - as well as two roof terraces that directly adjoin the sleeping areas on the upper floor. The transition between the public street space and the private living space develops like a threshold thanks to the roofing and the recess. The transition between the living spaces, terrace and garden, on the other hand, is fluid: the interior opens up flexibly into the exterior space via a sitting window on the one hand and a front made of sliding glass elements around the corner on the other, partially covered and shaded by a cantilever. To enable age-appropriate living on one level in later years, the study and guest room was designed to face the street. This can easily be converted into a bedroom at a later date. The exterior of the building, which has a modern, two-tone rendered façade, was constructed using single-skin masonry for ecological reasons. The solid wall deliberately avoids the high energy consumption that an often common thermal insulation composite system causes, both during production and disposal, and uses the heat and cold storage properties of solid components. The house's energy concept is based on a geothermal heat pump. 

www.enck-oswald.de

Photos:

Martin Gaissert
www.martingaissert.de

(Published in CUBE Cologne Bonn 01|22)