A remarkable and spacious detached house was built in a new development area in the northern Ruhr region, which was intended to offer the owners a great deal of privacy without being completely detached from the surroundings. Between typical detached houses and an adjacent apartment building to the east, the straightforward design language of the new building, which was designed by Vickers Architekten, really stands out.

In order to structure the plot, a two-storey cube was planned in a north-south direction. The special feature of the design is the staggered, protruding building sections on the first floor, which house a garage at the front and provide space for the cooking and dining area at the rear. The entrance area at the front is also demarcated by an additional single garage positioned at right angles to the house, creating a framed forecourt that marks the transition from public to private space. At the rear, the protruding cube shields it from the adjacent apartment building, creating a sheltered terrace that shifts the residents' lives outside during the warmer months.

The façade design also follows the principle of a gentle transition from the public street space to the private residential building and determines the relationship between closed and open areas: the east and west façades, which are both parallel to the neighboring buildings, are almost completely closed, while the façade facing the garden opens up over a large area. This not only ensures that there is as much daylight as possible in the cooking, dining and living areas, but also creates a flowing transition between the interior and exterior spaces. The façade facing the street is barely open on the first floor; only on the upper floor does a façade-wide window front provide natural daylight inside.

The chosen color scheme of the design is based on muted, rather dark tones. In line with this, the dark brick in red to grey and brown tones harmonizes with the simple anthracite of the aluminium window profiles, the garage door and the drainage pipe in the façade design. The color scheme can also be found in the interior: simple, modern tiles in anthracite run through the interior as floor tiles and determine the color choice in the bathroom as wall and floor tiles.

www.vickersarchitekten.de

(Published in CUBE Ruhr Area 01|20)