Lakeside House Bavaria

Appels Architects

Products

1242
Door handle fitting

British ar­chi­tect John Pawson subtly revises an iconic Mod­ernist handle – the ‘Reich Shape’ handle by Hans Poelzig – quietly breath ing new life into this fa­mil­iar form. Fab­ri­cated in classic bronze, Pawson’s metic­u­lously pro­por­tioned design reworks the oval cross-sec­tion to produce a handle that is com­fort­able in the hand and pleas­ing to the eye – the latest ex­pres­sion of an idea that has been re­peat­edly mod­i­fied over the course of nearly a century.

1242
Door handle fitting
15 1242
Plug-in handle for doors
34 1242
Lift/slide door handles

Distinctly geometrical experience

The Appels Ar­chi­tects prac­tice in Zurich has built an im­pres­sively low-key de­tached house on a lake­side plot in Bavaria. Their build­ing was con­ceived as a series of cubes placed ver­ti­cally to achieve its two dif­fer­ing heights and hor­i­zon­tally along its ground plan. This con­fig­u­ra­tion gives rise to an as­tutely gauged in­ter­play of private, reclu­sive spaces and an open-plan com­mu­nal block that fluidly wends its way between the en­closed cubes.

Such al­ter­na­tion between private and com­mu­nal spheres is like­wise visible from the outside in the build­ing’s façade, parts of which are open, others closed or semi-closed. Living quar­ters such as kitchen and sitting room are fitted with outsize windows af­ford­ing grand views of the garden, whilst places for re­tir­ing to are con­cealed behind translu­cent areas in the timber façade. Sec­tions of the façade in­stalled in front of the private windows can be folded back to let in more light and improve the view out. Some of the large windows can be re­cessed into the façade in their en­tirety.

The upshot, in com­bi­na­tion with a roof surface com­pris­ing several sin­gle-pitch units set at dif­fer­ing angles, is a build­ing whose outward ap­pear­ance is a dis­tinctly geo­met­ri­cal ex­pe­ri­ence. The effect is in­ten­si­fied by the house’s black timber façade. With the ex­cep­tion of the cellar, the entire build­ing is made of wood. The level of pre­ci­sion fa­cil­i­tated by its having been pre­fab­ri­cated in large sec­tions is readily dis­cernible.

Architecture and Object

Kaspar Appels, Clemens Götzinger, Nikolas Appels
Photo: © Appels Ar­chi­tects

“Space, load-bear­ing struc­ture and family life are all ar­tic­u­lated by straight­for­ward ar­chi­tec­tural means in this house,” is how Appels Ar­chi­tects de­scribe their pleas­ing blue­print.

Wood, stone, Nature

Notwith­stand­ing the cre­ativ­ity in­form­ing its design, there is some­thing serenely tran­quil about the way the build­ing fits in with its natural sur­round­ings. Its black timber lends the lo­ca­tion a well-nigh filmic at­mos­phere, a slightly chilly melan­choly. The area around is notable for its tall sea­soned trees, os­ten­si­bly un­tended meadows and shrub­bery. The house stands on ground sloping down towards a lake, more­over. Both the lake and a rock face behind the house are im­pos­ing fea­tures. The ar­chi­tects have most agree­ably in­cor­po­rated the latter into their design. One window looks out onto the rock, which is close enough to touch. A piece of it has even been in­stalled in the in­te­rior.

A love of ma­te­ri­als is to be felt through­out the house. All the timber walls inside have been painted white and, here too, con­tribute to the im­pres­sive sense of calm the ar­chi­tec­ture exudes. Grey ter­razzo tiling has been laid every­where on the ground floor. A mono­lithic kitchen island in the same ma­te­r­ial lit­er­ally seems to issue out of the floor­ing. A great sense of warmth is gen­er­ated by the timber used for the fitted fur­ni­ture, the stairs and the floor­ing in the upper storey.

The ar­chi­tects created points of con­trast with the white of the walls and doors by fitting door handles in black. The doors were milled out of the car­cass­ing timber for the walls and fitted flush. A Stain­less Steel variant of handle model FSB 1242 by British ar­chi­tect John Pawson was se­lected and sub­se­quently coated black by phys­i­cal vapour de­po­si­tion (PVD). The round rosettes are flush-mounted. The handle with its grip strik­ingly styled as an upright oval was fitted both to stan­dard room doors and to lifting/sliding doors.

Object Details

Photos: Florian Holzherr