Project: THE METAMORPHOSIS OF THE HOUSE
Collaborators: Peter Thomas Hornung, Elsa Katharina Jacobi
Location: Architecture Biennale 2018, Venice
Year: 2018
Type: residential
Size: 150 sqm
Description:
The project ‘THE METAMORPHOSIS OF THE HOUSE’ is closely connected to the exhibition ‘Time Space Existence’ and deals with the change of gestalt dependent on time, space and their natural existence.
Similar to metamorphic transformation in the plant kingdom, specific construction and design principles lead to the adaptation of the house to its environment. The close relationship between the house and its changing surroundings affects the outer form as well as the experience of space. The ratio of the spatial proportions is identical in floor plan, cross section and elevation. Observing a blossom, one can find a similar relation between their components.
‘THE METAMORPHOSIS OF THE HOUSE’ allows a clear differentiation, adaptation, and fusion of the house with its surrounding nature.
Thus, the concrete and its colourfulness differs clearly from the surroundings. Its structure is ponderous, robust, and dark, however it mirrors construction principles and transformation abilities also found in nature.
Adaptation takes place through the potential of the gestalt and the feature of the glass surfaces to open up to six sides in order to react to the surrounding nature. Each of the six visible and shapeable facades is characterised by an identical relation of concrete and glass surfaces.
Furthermore, the relation between built volume and contact surface to the ground, which at first might be confusing, reacts to familiar relations we know from nature. In order to make this possible, gestalt and volume inside align themselves with structural requirements. The grouted anchor of the house into the slope allows this spacial experience and forms the entrance.
The house transforms from what it was into what it is, into what it may be and potentially is already in a continuous circle of time, space, and existence.
005 The Metamorphosis Of The House