Jan Wiese Architekten . photos: © Simon Menges
My parents’ house was on a slope. On an incline of about 1.50 metres. In those days the developer had thought to himself that it would be clever to raise the ground floor up a bit more to let the new owners get out to the garden, which was at ground level.
A spiral staircase ran from the balcony on the ground floor down to the garden. This meant that I spent my whole childhood enjoying a special vista over the garden. I can still clearly remember my parents in their deckchairs; great garden parties with wonderfully laid-out tables; garden parties with happily drunken friends and mown lawns with vivid patterns I’d made myself (although only appreciated by me).
These memories – the perspective looking down on the garden and the things that happened there – are very dear to me. Always looking out from a crow’s nest. Always the whole scenery beneath me. And every time it drew me in, I climbed down.
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