FINCKH ARCHITEKTEN

Description

»The long, narrow building with its smooth reflective surfaces expands the site. Material, light and transparency create a feeling of breadth and open up the spaces.« The building is located on a south-facing slope above Esslingen in a developed residential area. The extremely narrow and steep plot has always been used as a driveway and was regarded as impossible to develop. The house designed for it, only 4.7 metres wide and 14 metres long, inserts itself into the slope and in between the neighbouring buildings as a long, slim volume. The filigree support structure was clad with thin, high-performance façades. Transparent glass fronts open up the building on the narrow eaves sides, oriented toward the green of the garden and a distant view of the Swabian Alb. The long gable ends are covered with 6-centimeter-thick, highly insulating translucent polycarbonate elements. This enables the maximum width to be achieved on the interior of 4.58 metres. The translucent thermal insulated façade heats and illuminates the interiors naturally and ensures privacy from prying eyes. The interplay between structure and envelope, between open and closed, as well as between transparent and translucent surfaces shapes the look and feel inside the home and leaves room for the unexpected. A cosmos emerges of different light and shadow moods, fluidly soft and extending into infinity.