Boltshauser Architekten / Lehm Ton Erde

Description

The materiality and form of the residential house are direct responses to the steep south-sloping scarp situation of the narrow plot in its landscape context – as if a monolithic block, similar to a piece of abstract and artificial nature, had been pressed out of the earth. Two clefts articulate the building of rammed earth, wedging it backwards with the scarp and establishing a frontal prelude or welcoming gesture towards the valley. The inside of the house is developed in the form of sequences of customizable spaces that respond storey-wise to the variable conditions. As opposed to more organic, archaic clay architecture, the morphology of the building aims towards a certain clarity and sharp-edgedness. The strips of clay bricks that are inserted between the typical clay layers optically stabilize the building structure by emphasizing the horizontality and heightening the light and shadow effects of the surface texture. At a material-atmospheric level, the spatial sequence shows a succession that literally ascends from the raw and archaic to distinguished splendour through a balanced overlapping of different treatment processes. Taken as a whole, the house is a laboratory-like experiment, depicting the close cooperation between the architect and the master clay builder and client Martin Rauch, and culminating in his own hand-construction of the building.