Patrick Reuter Architecture

The detached house is situated in the rear, private area of a narrow plot on a slight slope. The centerpiece is a continuous living space at ground level, which is glazed at the front and rear to the garden and framed on the sides by living rooms. The resulting spatial continuum seamlessly connects the interior and exterior spaces. On the sides, sliding and folding doors connect or separate the living area and the adjoining rooms as required. Cross-references are deliberately permitted and rigid boundaries are largely dispensed with, so that the living space remains variable and expandable. The central space is the result of a spatial disentanglement that originates in the separation of the main load-bearing walls, within which the enclosed spaces are formed. The room with the densest content, the main living space, is structurally an “empty” room and thus experiences tension and calm at the same time. A narrow staircase leads to the upper floor. This rests on the four inner corner points of the outer walls below. Interestingly, this places a heavy load on and accentuates the defining moments of the “empty space”. The load-bearing external walls made of exposed concrete are at right angles to each other on both floors. This is a consequence of the chosen orientation of the rooms and the deliberate constructive interplay between sensitivity and robustness. Contrasts that allude to the unevenness of the terrain and the pressure of the structural density and, in their simultaneous restlessness and simplicity, characterize the enclosed space.