Marte.Marte Architekten

Description

With the matter-of-factness of a barn, the homogenous sprayed concrete facade of the building stands out in contrast to the white of the wintry landscape. The square windows of varying sizes are distributed across the four wall surfaces as if stamped out of the volume. On the entrance level, accessed via an outdoor staircase, the volume is cinched in to form two load-bearing corner structures, which provide a weather-protected spot to look both out and through, and to make a grand entrance. Behind this middle section, a spiral staircase connects the upper living-room level with the two more private levels below. Semantically, this gesture made by the tower summons to mind both the archetype of a defensive fortification and an abstracted computer figure – the tower looks at once strangely familiar and utterly alien. Inside, the windows punched out of the double-walled concrete shell have broad solid oak surrounds framing landscape vistas. In addition to the raw concrete, untreated oak and black metal surfaces make up the austere material fabric. No lightweight holiday home was created here, but rather a place of refuge defying forthcoming changes in climate and landscape.