If you ask Georg Kratzenstein, project architect for Frankfurt, Germany based Meixner Schlueter Wendt Architects, to describe the house his firm designed for a family of five in the town of Kronberg im Taunus, he will tell you it’s a “completely normal, pitched-roof house, built on a slope, where the mass of the garden floor has been subtracted.” He will also tell you it can also be perceived as a “dynamic, hovering vehicle or flying object.”
At 3,500-square-feet, the three-story house is firmly embedded into its sloped site, which overlooks a valley with a densely forested hill in the distance. The ground floor, is a basement bunker used as a guest apartment. This submerged level gets natural light through a lightwell above. The first floor, or “garden” floor contains kitchen and living areas, and is, according to Kratzenstein, “a composition of boxes and levels embedded into the topography of the site, and glazed all around to make the transition between living area and orchard lawn as seamless as possible.” Then there’s the top floor, an aluminum-composite clad wedge that seems to hover above the ground. Adding to the aerospace effect are two remote controlled, trapezoidal shaped roof overhangs that are mounted on a shaft rotated by a telescope-motor. A push of a button raises or lowers the overhangs, letting a sky view and light from above flood the living room, and shading the space from harsh sun as needed. “The aluminum relates to automobiles and planes,” says Kratzenstein. “We wanted to amplify the look and feel of a moving vehicle instead of a static object.”
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