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Architects: STEINMETZDEMEYER
- Year: 2009
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Photographs:C. Weber
Text description provided by the architects. This single family house was built to replace an old barn in Dalheim, a village 20 km from Luxembourg.
Working in the volume of the original barn which butted up against another house, the design aims to remain modest and complementary to the 'art-deco-rural' style of the neighboring house. The basement of the barn with its vaulted cellar was maintained as a platform for the new house. This was also dictated by the presence of Roman relics in the local ground.
The house is developed on 3 levels. The ground floor is a very open space gathering the social living places, from the street to the garden: kitchen, dining and living room with a fireplace.
On the first floor to the garden side are two children’s and one guest bedrooms. The family room to the street and south-east side is clearly the heart of the house. The parent's more private district, like a hotel suite, is located under the roof. A large dormer volume has been created to give a generous space to the master bedroom with a special view onto the garden.
Clad in natural red cedar wood, the facade evokes the appearance of a functional farm building in the local tradition, and it also gives the façade an unusual materiality. The entrance window and door are in the same scale as the original barn gate in order to link the new design with the old. Wide use of shutters and sliding screens, other elements of the local rural architecture, make the street facade transformable, leaving the transparency of the house completely up to the inhabitants.
The back of the house which faces the private garden is comparatively more open, featuring a wide span of floor to ceiling glazing.
As the old basement is 6 meter deeper than the new house, a large terrace extending the living spaces was planned, looking down onto the garden.
