The Wohlfahrt-Laymann house is a residence near Frankfurt am
Main in Germany. The home was designed by Meixner Schluter Wendt Architekten
for Jurgen und Juliane Wohlfahrt-Laymann. Construction began in 2005 and was
completed in 2006. The original site had a 1930s house already built there, and
rather than demolishing this traditional “country cottage,” the architects
decided to use it and integrate the home into their design. This was no mere
renovation of an existing structure: this was a total envelopment and
penetration of the “country cottage.” A rectangular structure was built over
and around the entire cottage, as if a historical relic had been found and
needed protection. The cottage went from an interior and exterior structure to
existing entirely as interior.
I was
interested by this unusual relationship between interior and exterior which
occurs within the project. The facades of the cottage, formerly protecting the
chambers within, become part of the chambers themselves. A front door no longer
marks the threshold between interior and exterior, but instead becomes a portal
from one room to another. I immediately wanted to recreate this “house in a box”
with a paper cutting. I made a few sketches which I transferred into cut files,
then made the cuts and folded them into place. The result is a stereotypical image
of a house, made into 3 dimensions, and then literally enveloped inside 3 walls
of paper.
The
image of a little house inside a long, shadowy rectangle is striking in itself,
but the bottom view of the cut-footprint is the most intriguing aspect of the
model. It gives an idea of what the interior of this interior home would feel
like, almost like looking at a doll’s house (where there is also no exterior).
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