2 Comments »

Architect Lives & Works in Her Minimal Boat House

• Tweet

• Tweet

Architect Susanne Nobis designed this house and home office near Munich, Germany, for the perfect client – herself (and her family of four, and her architectural practice). Knowing exactly what the client wants makes the job easy!

At the side of a lake, Starnberger See, the house makes a reference to the traditional twin boat house that is iconic in the popular southern Bavarian recreation area.

Completely unpretentious, the design really couldn’t be simpler or more straightforward. Open shelves in each room contain that room’s needs. Anything you need to cook or eat is laid out plain and simple in the cooking and eating space. (A ladder will be needed to access the highest shelves.)

Anything you need to refer to in discussing architectural briefs with clients is stored on shelves up the walls in the architectural office in the second building. As if to illustrate exactly what a client might expect from the architect,  a no nonsense, form-follows-function design aesthetic is used here.

A rolling ladder makes these high shelves accessible. Throughout, she uses just unadorned, classic, unpretentious materials – metal, and wood, and glass.

Family rooms, in the back of the house, face towards the lake. The office and kitchen face the large grounds. Nobis says “in essence, the house is nothing more than a shelter from the climate, a space where one can move as freely as possible.”

In this, the structure, while referencing the iconic twin boathouse of the region, sketches out the outlines of a simple tent – barely providing the most minimal cover, leaving just an open expanse of glass in each end of the two buildings.

But it also has a quality of reverence, almost like a very minimal church.

Via Coolhunter

Photos by Roland Halbe