Projects

A parallelepiped, copper-clad house for a beekeeper and a wildflower meadow for the bees share a large plot of land. The house itself is introverted; the window openings are very deliberately positioned. The heart of the house is a tall sitting-room space rising to six metres, around which are grouped all the other rooms, and from which one can enjoy baroque-like vistas. The interior is painted throughout in an appropriate honey-yellow.

A 1970s boarding school building was modernized and enlarged. The focus was on an internal restructuring and a new, energy-efficient facade. A facade skin of enamelled glass, sheet metal, fibre-cement and solar panels now unites the various parts of the building into a single whole. While jade green and ruby-red tones dominate indoors, shades of grey determine the appearance of the exterior. To avoid dark access areas and allow visual connections between storeys, the ceilings in the central areas were replaced by glass floors. Hertl.Architekten is currently renovating the affiliated vocational school.

A former furniture showroom was fully renovated. Of the two parts of the building, the upright one was turned into a tower by the addition of three more storeys. In deference to the historic town centre, the new exterior of the retail, office and residential building is not glazed, as one might expect, but perforated and rendered. From a distance the roughened surface of the render is a warm brown; only up close does one realize that it is completely painted in gold.

The pool occupies a separate building embedded in the slope right next to the farmhouse. It has an extremely basic form and is made entirely of green glazed concrete. It seems to have been carved out of stone and is reminiscent of a grotto, an impression that is tempered by the extensive glazing and red sunshades.