The Red House

Bruchsal, Germany

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Other Projects by f m b architekten bda - Norman Binder, Andreas-Thomas Mayer

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The Red House

Bruchsal, Germany

Firm

f m b architekten bda - Norman Binder, Andreas-Thomas Mayer

Type

Residential › Private House

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2016

SIZE

0 sqft - 1000 sqft

This house for a young family with two kids is located in a centre-near development area of Bruchsal, a county seat town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The existing and the new environment is very heterogenic, dense and colorful and the only free building ground
was a narrow leftover area beside an already built semi-detached house. Only the availabil-ity and the location near by the city-centre decided the choice of the construction site.

But why is the house red (sang-de-boeuf)?
The local city-laws demanded a red tile roof in this area.
To give the building a sculptural presence and a poetic form, we decided to let wall, roof and all the details have a monochrome color in sang-de-boeuf, coming from the well picket tile roof color. This seemingly strong color provides a bit of coolness and settlement in this crowdie and colorful place and strengthens its identity.

Besides, we could widen the usable living area by giving up the usual roof overhang and still making a precise roof fitting to the neighbor. The resulting variance to the house row leads to a significant individuality of the house and, in spite of two corners, it now has four.
A privilege, usually only single sited houses can afford.

To improve the proportion of the house, the chimney was placed as a vertical element to the gable-front. This allowed us to “break” the otherwise very wide west front and structure the building form. A service-box for wood, trash and bikes separates the lower entrance-level and the higher garden-level by smart using the natural topography.

Due to as well being located in a river-flood area, the house was constructed in reinforced concrete and the low entrance level was built “waterproof”. All openings in this level can be protected and sealed to minimize damage in case of a flood (hopefully never needed…).
The balcony above the entrance is therefore ironical called a “jetty”.
The advantage of this level configuration is the generation of valuable living space. In this case, providing the children’s area on entry-level.

The construction with reinforced concrete comes alive in the inner as exposed concrete. Oak parquet flooring, white walls and light-grey wood made windows determine the internal space. Blank steel at the fireplace, stainless steel-mesh in the stairwell and well set color accents create atmospherically moods…