In fact, everything was already there – the 1930s brick house, built in the Lower Rhine style with a gabled roof and a whitewashed façade, standing side by side with an identical house in a housing estate in Meerbusch. However, renovation and extension were required: not only were there the usual structural defects in the building’s fabric – the walls and windows were barely insulated and the rafters were partly dilapidated – but the number of rooms was no longer perfectly suited to the needs of the four-member client family. Although a previous extension had added a conservatory on the garden side, this too was riddled with thermal bridges and allowed very little daylight into the interior.

The Düsseldorf-based architectural firm beige.box, led by Patrick Müller-Langguth, was commissioned to develop a renovation scheme that sensitively extends the house without altering its much-loved, period-typical form. The conservatory was completely demolished and replaced by a single-storey extension that houses the spacious living room with a view of the garden. Two skylights, whose reveals have been fully mirrored, ensure that not only daylight but also the sky floods into the living and dining areas. This also created – almost automatically – a roof terrace with a view of the garden. Another eye-catching feature in the kitchen is a band of windows set into the masonry, into which the kitchen counter extends seamlessly without a raised edge. To create a separate master floor with a bathroom and dressing room, the attic – now insulated for the first time – was converted, illuminated by larger skylights and accessed via a new, sculptural steel-and-glass staircase extending from the main staircase. Otherwise, care was taken to use only a few, but authentic, materials. This is also evident from the outside: the stucco mouldings on the extended roof overhangs were restored true to the original, whilst the old lattice windows were replaced with matt-finished wood-aluminium units. Trowelled clinker brick slips of varying thicknesses clad the newly insulated masonry, skilfully recreating the architectural irregularities of the former brick façade. It is therefore more than a compliment to say that, even after the renovation, the house looks just like its identical neighbour.

www.beigebox.de

(Featured in CUBE Düsseldorf 01|20)