Modersohn & Freiesleben . photos: © Sebastian Schels
It’s a big task: a young family returns to the village of their grandparents, where their new home will be built. He will be the local GP, she will set up a practice for supervision and coaching, the two small children will join the school in the neighbouring village.
Netra lies idyllically, almost lonely, in the countryside. Hills with castles and hiking trails along the former inner-German border make the surroundings attractive. The village itself has a former moated castle, a strikingly crowned stone church and gabled houses.
If you approach the village from the outside, a red roofscape characterises the village ensemble. People know each other here and help each other, and help is often needed.
For a long time, hardly any new building have been built here, and if, it was in light yellow plastic plaster surface on Styrofoam with pvc windows and stainless steel railings, maybe some glossy natural stone – that’s the state of the art today.
A publication leads the W´s a. couple, who questions this way of doing things, to us in Berlin. Could we take over the project from here? Covid does not make the circumstances any easier – and the lack of craftsmanship in general is painfully brought home to us during the process.
A large meadow centrally located in the village, slightly elevated above the Graburgweg, is accessed from the east.
The new building will house many functions: 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, the supervising practice and a living area with space to work, all under its red tiled roof. Strictly speaking, there are three roofs. They merge into one house, an ensemble of houses, so the village continues to be built.
Together, the house fragments form a courtyard, and where one of them recedes, there is a terrace, to linger, to retreat, or the entrance, framed by an arch, here you are welcome!
The local building contractor can build the solid structure, a carpenter is also on site. The roofer is bringing in his old dad, a master roofer, because they haven’t done something like this in a long time.
Our approach is a simple house, brick and carpentry, insulating bricks with a layer of bright long lasting, low maintenance red clinker from the Meissen region, a visible roof structure. Sealed screed connects the flowing rooms. Low tech and raw materials.
Three houses for living and working, each with its own character, the working house with small windows to the neighbour close by and a door to the inner courtyard, the sleeping wing with galleries for the children’s bedrooms. Here the roof curves upwards to a point, the eaves become a ridge. And the central house has a gallery for playing or working, depending on the time of day. This room offers a lot of space, two trusses frame the chimney, the fireplace as the centre between kitchen, living and dining.
And even though the construction period was overshadowed by all kinds of circumstances, such as the young Ukrainian masons, with whom we had communicated wonderfully, being called back to his homeland in a hurry in the middle of it all. The consequences of the war made everything else more difficult too, there is now a house to be lived in, which can tell many stories – and which can become a home.
AF
Oct. 2023
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House W., Netra, North Hesse, 2020-2023
Modersohn & Freiesleben, Berlin
