Coup de théâtre, here is the starting point of the project of the Dutch architect Ben Van Berkel for a house in Stuttgart’s countryside, Germany. At first sight the mission has been accomplished because this villa, built for an upper-class family, is not what you expected from a country house. The house, built on a vineyard that overlooks the  city, is designed to astonish people thanks to its white structure alternated to huge windows that offer a perspective view of the surroundings. The real essence of the house is the central staircase, generated by the white oak folding sheet that covers the floor and wrapped on itself, because it connects both the two floors and all surrounded spaces which seem not to be divided in rooms as per our tradition but they face each other and then on the landscape as well.  So, the focus of this project remains the landscape. An amazing house where tradition and innovation merge together. On the one hand, there are stained glass windows, white clay plasters dotted with small reflecting stone fragments and sinuous lines integrated in a specific furniture that merges together with the architecture reinforcing the idea of continuity both between rooms and, thanks to the use of the same materials, domestic and external environment.

On the other hand, the tradition stands: a room dedicated to hunting trophies of the family turns into a black room different from the rest of the house so that it becomes hard to understand the real meaning. Here the tradition is not distorted, but reinterpreted through the eyes of the architect who transforms a typical country house element such as a fireplace into a yellow sandstone rectangular block and the sauna becomes part of the master bedroom design. A sculpture house with double facing: up North, on the vineyard already part of the house thanks to sliding panels that can be completely opened and merge together external and interior areas; down South on the city’s rooftops. A home that offers an alternative and innovative concept of the classic country house. 

INFO: www.unstudio.com 

Photo Courtesy UNStudio