​Strand House | Germany | 2013

The house is located in the southeast of Berlin, 70 km from its center, directly by the Scharmützelsee lake. It is a weekend house with the prospect of longer stays. The property belongs to the district of Saarow Strand in the municipality of Bad Saarow.

The plot has an average width of 24 m and a length of 130 m. A small existing building is located directly on the lakeshore. Behind it, a public lakeside path divides the property. The house, including the roof, consists of a load-bearing outer shell of reinforced concrete, profiled on the outer sides by battens inserted into the formwork. The transitions between the vertical and sloping surfaces are continuous, without platforms or projections. Gutters are integrated into the roof surface.

The window openings are elements of the building structure and their position is determined by visual relationships and the positioning of the house on the plot. In addition to these special features, in particular, the sloping position of the ridge in the ground plan transforms the contours of an ordinary house with a pitched roof into a complex figure.

The house is insulated on the inside. On the first floor, the walls and ceilings are entirely covered with plywood panels, giving this part of the house an intimate, homely feel. The ground floor is devoid of load-bearing walls. It is a large room glazed on both long sides, through which the outside space literally flows. Exposed concrete surfaces dominate here, creating a space that can be used for very different purposes depending on the season.