Form Follows SHEEP
It was not the pursuit of more space, but the dream of a special way of living that drew the Schneider family to this hillside. Just a few steps from the grandparents’ much larger house, yet a different world: steep, dotted with fruit trees, crisscrossed by footpaths and terraces that grazing sheep had etched into the slope over decades. These traces became the inspiration – a grown pattern showing how paths and levels could be laid into the incline.
For decades, the plot had been dismissed as “unbuildable.” But a couple who fought for their vision succeeded in having the village boundary redrawn – opening up a narrow corridor through which a fixed idea became a real possibility. What followed were endless conversations with authorities and skeptical neighbors – and a patient search for a creative loophole.
The building nestles into the hillside, resting on the red sandstone below: at the base a concrete plinth, above it a timber structure from their own forest – vertically clad, monolithic, almost closed off towards the street, wide open to the valley. From the outset, the principles were clear: compact, sustainable, resource-conscious.
Deliberately with far less living space than before – to save materials, energy, and costs, and more importantly, to embody their own convictions.
The living concept is radically open. Only the necessary walls, hardly any doors, sightlines running across the house. This was possible because client and architect developed the project together from the ground up – from the first idea to the final choice of materials.
Even during construction, one detail took on a special role: the staircase. Hardly installed, it became a place for conversations, pauses, and quiet observation. Anyone walking down it looks through the “church window” onto the stream 15 meters below, the Spessart forest, and the sky above. And in the village, people whispered: “Ain’t that gonna be a church?”
