House on Budden Tower, Münster

Ar­chi­tects from the hehn­pohl ar­chitek­tur prac­tice have put the blue­print for a house to effect near the prom­e­nade on the former city for­ti­fi­ca­tions around the old heart of Münster that, with its rad­i­cally purist formal idiom, blends in almost or­gan­i­cally with the ex­ist­ing stock whilst also being thrillingly modern. The House on Budden Tower stands on Bud­den­straße flanked by a row of period gable-roofed houses. The new build­ing is clearly aligned with its older neigh­bours in ar­chi­tec­tural terms and, like them, adheres to the very pro­to­type of a house.

The coal-fired, hand-moulded bricks se­lected for the façade add to the way the build­ing chimes in with Münster’s ar­chi­tec­tural core. A large window on the first floor affords a view of the epony­mous Budden Tower, whose cir­cu­lar brick façade is one of the few visible remains of Münster’s former city for­ti­fi­ca­tions from the 12th century. The ar­chi­tects set store by the façade’s honest, ar­ti­sanal ap­pear­ance. All the bricks from the an­nu­lar-kiln firing, for in­stance, were deemed suit­able for use. Once the bricks had been pointed, the façade was merely brushed clean with a broom so as not to oblit­er­ate traces of the ar­ti­sanal input in­volved.

Making things seem easy that are, in fact, any­thing but easy is one of the fun­da­men­tal ob­jec­tives pursued by the young ar­chi­tec­tural prac­tice from Münster, and one they have managed to achieve with aplomb in their House on Budden Tower. They have created modern ar­chi­tec­ture pared down to the bare es­sen­tials whose re­straint nev­er­the­less makes it seem as if it had always stood there.

The design motif for the façade derives from factors spe­cific to the site. Three dif­fer­ent plot align­ments con­verge here and are echoed by three skewed planes in the façade that pro­trude to an ever-greater degree from floor to floor. The three lines come to a point on the left­hand edge of the house, giving it the im­pres­sion of fanning out from the side. By dint of its stag­gered struc­ture, the façade also con­sti­tutes a con­tem­po­rary trans­for­ma­tion of its period coun­ter­parts to either side, whose tra­di­tional floor di­vi­sions and ren­dered base­ments make the fact that they are three-storey build­ings more readily dis­cernible to the on­looker.

The dis­tinc­tive at­mos­phere in the in­ter­nal spaces has been brought about by fo­cus­ing on two ma­te­ri­als – timber and fair-faced con­crete – and making canny use of day­light. The con­crete was shut­tered on site and applied in the crude state without any post­pro­cess­ing. Joints and craft-re­lated dis­crep­an­cies lend the build­ing a sculp­tural quality as a result that almost gives it the status of an art object. Oak floor­ing which has merely been oiled makes for a sense of con­trast that imbues the spaces with a do­mes­tic feel. Roof glazing el­e­ments placed un­usu­ally but to good effect against the eaves and in the ridge area cause in­di­rect day­light to pen­e­trate deep inside the house.

It was decided to use the FSB 1242 handle model for the windows and doors. The “Re­ich-shape” lever handle by Hans Poelzig, which the British ar­chi­tect John Pawson re­worked for FSB and opted to have pro­duced in Bronze, is of a sim­plic­ity that is well-nigh poetic, he feels. The handles in the House on Budden Tower boast an op­ti­cally vari­able matt Bronze finish that seam­lessly accords with the concept of ma­te­r­ial honesty that hehn­pohl ar­chitek­tur espouse. “The ma­te­r­ial simply exudes dignity”, the ar­chi­tects them­selves enthuse, “and at the same time, despite being a ‘cold’ metal, it is a joy to take hold of.”. The model’s formal clarity and suf­fused edges re­in­force the overall impact of the in­te­rior spaces and bring ma­te­r­ial and form into har­mo­nious accord. The ar­chi­tects have already gar­nered a variety of prizes for their fe­lic­i­tously con­ceived work, in­clud­ing the 2019 Houses of the Year Award and that for the “Build­ing in a His­tor­i­cal Context” cat­e­gory in the German Brick Prize awards.