The two-storey detached house with its generous, open first floor and its metal-clad upper floor seems like a contradiction in terms: do you want to present yourself openly or protect yourself from the neighbors' prying eyes? Both are true: the open areas such as cooking, dining and living are the "day side". The further up you go, the more private the functions of the rooms become - the "night side", if you like.

The reality is more complicated: there is not simply a first floor and an upper floor above, as the house is accessed via split levels. It is cut vertically, so to speak, and reconnected half a storey apart. After each half-staircase, which changes direction by 180 degrees, the house rotates and is returned to its original state after a further rotation. In this way, the rooms can develop according to their function from the living area with access to the garden to the workplace on the mezzanine level and up to the sleeping area. What is the advantage? A conventional staircase requires a lot of space and also gives away half of it, as the areas under the stairs can often not be used. Quite different here: Not a single centimeter seems lost. Another advantage is that the building can adapt to the conditions of the building site. For example, if the plot is on a slope or even just a slight incline, the house "climbs" with it. The design of this complicated building, which posed a number of challenges for the craftsmen, was created by Liebel Architekten from Aalen. The architects also won an award for this complex design idea, which was based on the client's wishes. And rightly so!

The upper half of the house with its metal cladding juts out over the slightly smaller first floor. This results in a huge terrace on the upper floor instead of what appears to be a living area. In reality, a good third of the house consists of this enclosed outdoor area. What appears from the outside to be a simple two-storey detached house is actually a compact building that is nevertheless airy. The curtain façade made of perforated copper sheeting is a work of art and highly complex, reveals metalworker Mike Fleischer. His task was to create this semi-transparent façade cladding made of sheet copper with a specially designed perforated pattern. The silhouettes of the trees that had to make way for the new building were to be visible on the outside of the copper cladding. This required precision work accurate to the millimeter. Individual panels measuring 220 x 90 cm had to be put together to form a whole in such a way that the tree pattern was displayed coherently. In addition, individual folding elements were to be built into the shell, which could be opened to form windows by sliding them aside. Another complication was the substructure for the copper sheets. First of all, their stability had to be guaranteed. This was achieved during production by folding the edges to stabilize the sheet metal. The metalworkers created an intricate wooden frame and aluminum post construction, which of course also had to look elegant from the inside. The floors inside are made of seamless screed, in the bedrooms of oak, as are the window frames. A garden designed with reduced simplicity and a water basin along one of the edges of the house round off the masterpiece.  

www.liebelarchitekten.de

Photos:

Brigida González
www.brigidagonzalez.de
Ralf Dieter Bischoff
www.ralfdieterbischoff.de

(Published in CUBE 01|22)