Haus im Erlengrund
The Haus im Erlengrund represents an original structural form for the family apartment. The floor plan and external form reflect the life that exists within the building. The design therefore develops consistently from the interior outwards, from the space of the family to the space of the city. The location’s developed environment gives no impression of any urban plan, both in terms of a uniform alignment and with respect to the buildings’ dimensions. Nor can one speak of a canon of materials. The houses, which are individualised without any discernible inspiration, seem to have been dropped wherever the distance to the street and the neighbours permitted. The Haus im Erlengrund, a single-storey building with a flat saddle roof, retreats from the line of the street. The design is ordered by the square of a core area that is divided into a grid with nine by nine segments. The living rooms of the house are organised within those boundaries, while the auxiliary rooms stretch out asymmetrically beyond their inner spaces. The floor plan has the shape of a cross, its arms merging into an asymmetrically positioned core space. This space is the family’s living room, around which the eat-in kitchen to the south and the bedrooms to the west, north and east are aligned. The open fireplace between the kitchen and living room visibly expresses the idea of coming together in those rooms. The flame, a Vitruvian motif of civilisation, as expressed symbolically in Gottfried Semper’s translation into a fireplace, represents both the building’s spatial and conceptual centre. The architect primarily considered the requirements of family living to arrive at the design of the building. It is an approach that would not need to be explicitly stated, had that aspect not been ignored so often elsewhere. In the Haus im Erlengrund, communal family life, as expressed by the floor plan and the centrifugal organisation of the building sections, reflects the ideal of urban community.
