Seasonal touch: clay and concrete combine to make a house for all seasons

Sixty-three year old Mrs Seifert commissioned this radical house after her nineteenth-century home burnt down. Unlike the former property, her new home allows her to experience the changing seasons. Balancing privacy and openness was therefore the architect's principal challenge in a design process that investigated the relationship between spatial determinism and freedom of use. Analysing Rietveld's flexible arrangement and Mies's static space, which opened up more opportunities of use? In the end the latter was the strategy of choice, producing a plan that sets two solid cores within a crystalline glass envelope. The concrete cores--materially consistent with the soffit--contain all the necessary cellular spaces, with living and sleeping areas being arranged around the glazed perimeter. A concrete wall that defines the entrance court serves to conceal the garden from view until visitors have entered the house. The house was built in under seven months, and has been happily occupied since the beginning of 2006. R.G.

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COPYRIGHT 2006 EMAP Architecture
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