A new single-family house! Built on a greenfield site! From an ecological point of view, not necessarily the best solution. The family who commissioned

Haus O

was more than aware of this. For this reason, the new house was also to be planned and built to be as “grandchild-friendly” as possible in as many other aspects as possible. For this reason, IFUB* pulled (almost) every lever: a compact solid-wood house without a basement. Energy-efficient without a lot of technology. Glue-free, disassemblable, and designed for recycling. Built with many healthy and climate-friendly materials. And on top of that, it’s flexible and can be divided to accommodate different stages of the family’s life. If you’re going to have a single-family home - this is the way to do it!

For solar shading as well as for the usability of the interior spaces, one rule applies: the

Ratio of window area to wall area

has to be right! Too much glass not only creates problems with overheating, but also leads to a lack of a sense of comfort and reduces the possibilities for placing furniture. For this reason, on the ground floor, solid wall surfaces alternate with well-proportioned windows. By standardizing the window formats and avoiding expensive sliding doors, there was enough budget for the special round windows on the upper floor, as well as the wooden sliding shutters.

Building ecologically does not have to be a cost constraint - especially when expensive and highly unsustainable building elements, such as a basement, are simply left out. The

Storage spaces

that most families need can, as in this case, also be easily accommodated in the pitched roof of the garage. An additional (ecological) advantage: a pitched roof requires no plastics and is much more durable than any flat roof.

The design of the

Facades

envisions a deliberate separation between the ground floor and the upper floor. The ground floor consists of movable and fixed frames made of untreated larch wood. Above this sits the upper floor, clad in wide, closed and white-painted spruce timber boards. It projects slightly beyond the ground floor and not only provides shelter from the rain, but also integrates the solar shading rails, lights and gutters in a visually appealing way.

The passage

between the house and garage serves as an additional entrance, provides access to the garden, and also visually separates the two building volumes.

While the solar shading on the ground floor, with

angled slats

allows indirect light into the house and creates a lively and varied appearance from the outside, the facade above is designed with flat boards as a uniform, closed volume.

The design of the

kitchen island

picks up on the vertical joints of the solid timber exterior walls as a design element. An intense green was chosen as the color, which not only complements the green natural stone worktop, but also harmonizes with the light green tone of the core.

Each parent was allowed to choose one of the two bathrooms in the house. The

shower room

on the ground floor was tiled in a fresh mint tone to match the color of the core. This was combined with pink terrazzo and oiled spruce wood.

The view

from the interior bathroom through the upper floor and roof to the outside.

A tried-and-tested way to make small spaces feel larger is to use

mirrors.

In this case, a bathroom cabinet is hidden behind the mirror. Thanks to the arrangement of the doors, opening the cabinet also provides a view of the back of your head.

One of the house’s special features. There are two identical, simple

staircases

integrated into the core. What makes them special? Thanks to the two interior staircases, the house can easily be divided into two equally sized units at a later stage.

Located on the upper floor, the different atmosphere is immediately noticeable through the change in color scheme. Here, the solid timber interior walls are surrounded by a white

clay-plaster shell.

The upper floor contains three individual rooms and a bathroom with a bathtub, but due to the two staircases, there is no continuous corridor. A connection through the entire house is nevertheless possible through the

interior doors

arranged in a row.

The room at the western end is

the parents’ bedroom.

Here, light enters the room not only through the large round window, but also through the roof windows. The opening up into the roof space also makes full use of the height of the roof structure.

Two rooms are arranged in the middle of the house. One of them is a second children’s room, which is currently still being used as a

home office.

The light shaft to the bathroom is also visible here, making use of one of the roof windows to bring daylight into the ground floor. For this reason, this is the only room, apart from the staircases, that also has a north-facing roof window.

The second room in the middle of the house is the large

family bathroom

with a double vanity, WC, bathtub and open shower. Particularly nice: From the bathtub, you can look up at the sky through the roof windows.

In keeping with the round windows, this bathroom features a round, backlit mirror. At the washbasin, the

color concept

of the bathroom comes together. Here, orange-red tiles are combined with a dark, intense blue tone for the cabinetry. The floor, like the bathtub, is finished with light grey tiles. As throughout the upper floor, the interior walls here are made of solid timber, while the underside of the roof is clad with clay building boards.

All the storage space in the family bathroom is accommodated in one large dark blue

built-in furniture.

It was designed around the door and also incorporates the vanity unit.

The bathroom furniture in detail. Even the

trash bin

has been integrated in a visually appealing way.