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Architects: Meier Unger
- Area: 150 m²
- Year: 2020
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Photographs:Philip Heckhausen
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Lead Architects: Jan Meier, Lena Unger
Text description provided by the architects. Erler House posed the task of designing a single-family house, a task that the professional house-building industry carries out hundreds of times a day with dazzling speed but an optimized variation. This unfortunately leaves the little potential for appropriation or a desire to think outside the box. By contrast, the centuries-old village structure, despite having taken some damage over the years, still held architectural potential and we used this to our advantage.
Fascinated by village structures that have a unique form of community and public spaces, this ultimately became the design motivation. Erler House is therefore not understood just as a building, but as an ensemble of spatial situations. The driveway becomes a covered square just off the street and marks the entrance to the residential building. The square enclosed by the individual buildings transforms into a courtyard space and the center of family life, and in turn, can also be understood as the space in which the individual neighboring buildings come together to form a whole.
This juxtaposition is also reflected in the design of the façades. On the one hand, the façades on the square are elevated and, on the other, their multitude of ornaments make them effective design elements. Only after completion did it become clear that the courtyard ensemble by no means attempts to close itself off hermetically, but rather allows views of the neighboring buildings through the offset of the individual structures with their different heights. This interaction creates the impression of being part of a community or even a village society.
From the beginning, there was a desire for the surfaces to possess appealing qualities to the senses. In the search for an appropriate material that could satisfy these criteria, brick, and masonry became decisive. In order to remove transport distances of several hundred kilometers, we went on a region-specific search and found an old brick manufactory in Nossen near Dresden.
Each individual brick, therefore, became a unique piece of the design. Similar to the manufacturing process, we also adjusted elements of the construction process. Increasing the bearing and butt joints to 2-3 cm, we transformed the slots in the bricks into ornaments and used every last scrap of material available in lintels, capitals, roof edges, letterboxes, planters, fountains, benches, and much more.
Our ideas and motivation were quickly passed on to the family responsible for the project. We also recognized and encouraged their skills and interest in wanting to build themselves, and after much planning and discussion, they were able to do so. The outhouse, plant troughs, lintels, and the well of the farm were built by the family themselves and would not have been possible without this effort. The confidence in the ability to participate ourselves enabled us to create a rich variety of architectural elements that enhanced the project and keep it unique to this day.
