Love of light and the requirement of privacy led for the design of a single-family (detached) house in Duisburg to a solution which in the building shell combines the seemingly contradictory requirements with each other. How stringently the implementation of the subject of ‘light‘ was pursued, is already intimated by the Romantic author Bettina von Arnim’s saying decorating the inner entrance façade in a programmatic way, "Whoever yearns for light is not without light for yearning is light in itself."
House S. is located in an organically grown residential area characterized by bungalows built in the 70s. The property has the adaptation to the natural terrain situation, which showed a marked descent towards the south, to thank for its different floor spaces differing from storey to storey. In order to make optimum use of these conditions, the idea of a building divided up by staggered heights was born. The basement with the functions sleeping and bathroom/wellness as well as the cellar and technical equipment rooms runs out to the south at ground level. The building level entered as the ground floor from the north with the living, eating and cooking functions is given an elevated position due to the terrain sloping down southwards. A staggered storey which is set back one balcony width, houses a functionally self-contained apartment with direct access to it via a staircase in the entrance area per-vaded with light. Separated from the main building structure by a connecting corridor in the garden area there is additionally a vertically staggered solitary building which is used as a private office. When passing from the shielded but nevertheless representative entrance hall into the adjacent utility areas it becomes clear that they did not in any way wish to leave yearning as the only source of light.
Three metre-high rooms and white wall areas reinforce the play of daylight that streams in through the façade almost completely opened to the south. Generously dimensioned areas of glazing with horizon-tal bands of plaster, together with the terraces, divide up the southern façade and integrate the com-pletely green garden area. A connected open suite of living room, dining room and kitchen creates flowing spaces and a variety of views between the areas. By means of generously dimensioned sliding doors any privacy desired is possible at any time.
In the interior design, there is a puristic dialogue of construction materials, in which floor areas with large-format grey ceramic tiles and walnut parquet as well as metal and light-grey painted stairs, steel banisters and noble kitchen furniture form a subdued contrast to the surrounding white surfaces. The lighting architecture in the house and the garden which includes, among other things, the illumination of a large oak tree vis-à-vis the southern façade, was handled by the Hamburg lighting designer Tom Schlotfeldt.
Despite their wish for light and transparence, the building owners were not willing to make any com-promises as regards energy efficiency of the building shell. The above-average thermal insulation of the non-transparent parts of the façade and an economical and low-emission heating unit with ultra-modern natural gas condensing heating technology were therefore obligatory. Consistently, an opti-mum combination of large-format transparence and energy efficiency was achieved by the use of a highly thermally insulated window system.