© h.s.d.architekten
Furniture

Beautifully renovated

A monument with a view

Aus Lärche: Der Dielenboden geht nahtlos in die raumhohen Schränke über. Foto: H.S.D. Architekten
Ein Wohntraum mit Ein- und Ausblicken. Foto: H.S.D. Architekten
© h.s.d.architekten
Foto: H.S.D. Architekten

The Böcker house: a Gründerzeit villa built in 1875 in Detmold, North Rhine-Westphalia. It was used as a home, sewing school, insurance office, classroom and even as a pub. "This variety of uses shows how flexible and therefore sustainable the floor plan typologies of the Gründerzeit are," explains Professor André Habermann from h.s.d.architekten, who reverted the listed building its original purpose as a residential building. He succeeded in the art of fitting out the historic building with modern living comfort. The centrepiece of the project was the energetic renovation. But how to insulate without endangering the stucco facade and the historic windows? Habermann found the perfect solution: internal insulation made of wood fibre boards and clay plaster, as well as a ventilation system with heat recovery and extending the windows to box windows. "To do this, we installed insulating glazing flush with the interior insulation," he says. As a result, the view of the filigree original windows is neither obscured from the outside nor from the inside.

Room in a room

Regarding the interior, the architect retained the original substance and layout, with one major exception, "We removed the ceiling above the dining room so that only the wooden beams remained," explains Habermann. This created a room almost eight metres high, which serves as a communicative link in the apartment. The rooms on the upper floor are transformed into galleries. Their high doors open into nothingness and reveal exciting glimpses of the levels below and opposite. However, the many doors were not only an opportunity, but also a challenge: where to put a wardrobe, for example, when there is hardly a continuous wall? Furthermore, none of the rooms seemed appropriate to be a bathroom. "That's why we developed a room-in-room concept and made a combination of bathroom and wardrobe as large white tubes in the middle of a room," explains Habermann. The shower tray, rear shower wall and sink are made of acrylic stone. The ceiling, walls and box elements are made of MDF, the Schöning joinery primed with 2K-Epoxigrund from ADLER, painted with ADLER Pigmopur and finished with ADLER Pigmotop. All in white – as a contrast to the most striking surfaces in the entire house, the well-preserved pitch-pine planks.

Trick for the kitchen

These fine floors made of highly sought-after imported wood from the Gründerzeit were preserved throughout the house – except in the kitchen. But here, the client wanted a special synergy of matching floor and furniture. "We have found that local larch trees are most similar to pitch-pine planks in terms of colour and structure," explains Dirk Schöning of the eponymous joinery company. "But it wasn't easy to find a material that was suitable for both the floor and furniture making." In the end, the master joiner chose 3-layer larch boards. For the floor, he split them into board width and painted them with 

ADLER PUR-Strong G10. For the cupboards he let the material continue almost seamlessly. In this way the floor and the tall cupboards, primed with ADLERLegnopur G10 to give greater body and painted with ADLER PUR-Antiscratch G10, appear to be one seamless unit. They are complemented by another white cube – the cooking island. "We filled the fronts with ADLER Isofill and then painted them again with ADLER Pigmopur. A layer of ADLER PUR-Antiscratch G10 protects the surfaces from scratches," explains Schöning. And how does it present itself in this carefully considered monument? "Very pleasant," say the clients, acknowledging the work of h.s.d.architekten who have transformed the art nouveau villa in Detmold into a modern residential building with respect and expertise.

Schöning joinery
h.s.d.architekten

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