A radical conversion

The German Meixner Schlüter Wendt got a commission for a house in a wealthy residential area near Frankfurt. The thing is: on the site was already an unspectacular, 1930-style house. Most (rationally thinking) architects would've probably suggested to tear down the house. But not the architects of this project: they decided to have a little bit more fun with the house, and went for an approach that seems to be barrowed from Gordon Matta-Clark.

They took the original house and went for a process of transforming the object. But not in the traditional way, but by means of a metamorphosis. The appearingly normal setting of the house in the nature is distorted, but at the same time made more tangible. They built a shell around the old house, creating interesting intermediate spaces between the old and the new. Then they slowly started to cut open the old house. Either to let light in (or to create a stronger relation to the surrounding nature), or to allow for spatially more interesting places. Some other parts (such as the rooftop rooms) were extended to meet the boundaries of the new structure.

It's a paradoxically unnormal house. Or a paradoxically normal house. It depends on the way you look at it. The thing is that the distortion of the existing reality into a blurry, new reality creates a spectacular building that can be read like a house, like a piece of art and like a layering of history, all in one.


Read more on convertible ity.de.