"People can be sociable only when
they have some protection from each other"
Richard
Sennett: “The
Fall of Public Man”
Intimacy and privacy as ambiguity of the
social unit family and its individuals outline the spatial and temporal score
of the family house on an extended site in Potsdam, Germany.
4 pavilions each encapsulating private needs, programs or wishes of its different inhabitants
constitute the house’s organism:
-
the “kids’ pavilion” for 3 boys,
each room with direct and discreet escape to the garden’s or girlfriend’s
pleasure ground;
-
the “garden-pavilion” interpreting
the classic living-room as kaleidoscope of exterior and interior landscapes;
-
the “garden wall”, a long slim
building with a sequence of compact cabinets (kid’s bathroom, kitchen, guest
and storage room) protecting privacy against both too close and bad real-estate
developments;
-
the “parents’ house” lying upon
kid’s pavilion and garden wall shelters spheres of adult privacy, work and
pleasure.
In between these “cellas” shape a promenade
of inner and outer continuous space as common places of family life – entrée,
garden-hall as dining- and playground, patio, garden terrace - that is weaved
into the garden space.
The interaction of capsuled and continuous
space correspond to that of stage and auditorium: sliding doors transform the
kitchen cabinet to an alcove to the garden-hall, that itself changes to a
loggia of terrace and garden by opening wide sliding glass doors.
Robust materiality and fine detailing of
the pavilions’ different outer skins accord both their permanence and
mutability:
Rhombus-profiled red cedar wood gladding
quickly weathering silver grey mark the pavilions of predominant adult use.
Flushly mounted sliding and hinged shutters allow further vernier adjustment of
privacy as well as augmented cubic abstraction.
A thick grey and yellowish coloured shell
lime plaster structured with fine ruling encloses the kids’ pavilion and garden
wall, allowing its skin to mature with all traces of time without aesthetic or
constructive damage. Sills, stairs and all covers are made of acidulated fair faced concrete.
The almost maximized house surface is
compensated by augmented insulation and a separate heating regulation for each
pavilion thus one can be switched off totally if temporarily not inhabited.
Within the longer life cycle(s) of house
and inhabitants the different pavilions can be reprogrammed according to
changing conditions or inhabitants: all inner partitions within the pavilions
can be removed, thus the kid’s house can be converted into a home office once
the kids left their parents’ house.