Marte.Marte Architekten

Description

The house of yards is a monolithic concrete block that hunkers down into the gentle slope, its imposing size of 38 by 15 metres barely noticeable from the street. Two windows and two cut-outs interrupt the grey stone on the valley side – the only openings. The entrance to the house leads through the hillside flank into a small, narrowly circumscribed entrance courtyard. The building encloses four such courtyards, including the central sundeck with pool, all of which bring the daylight deep into the concrete volume even without windows. The hermetic closure opens up as soon as one experiences the house from the inside. A gigantic, frameless window affords a breath-taking view from the kitchen through the Rhine valley all the way to the Swiss Alps – a panorama in CinemaScope format. An open floor plan connects spacious rooms in a fluid sequence. All details (storage spaces, building technology etc.) are concealed in ceiling-height built-in cabinets made of solid oak, which also covers the floors and interior walls. The vista from the living room ranges through the courtyard with pool and onward through a gentle »curtain« of trees out onto the valley. Everything unfolds on a single level, another factor in the extraordinary ambience of this house. The lower level is merely a bonus that follows from the hillside site. Recessed behind a break in the building’s outer skin, guest rooms for the two adult children are located here, while the outer shell accommodates a laundry room and a wine cellar, bathtub, toilet and fireplace.