Ebeling House

[Left] Southeast facade [Right] View from the garden.

Project details

• Project Name: Ebeling House
• Client: Sabine Ebeling
• Project Type: Residential
• Principal Designer/s: Archifactory.de
• Design Team: Matthias Herrmann, Matthias Koch, Till Roggel
• Date of commencement of project: 2000
• Date of completion of project: 2001
• Location of site: Dortmund, Germany
• Site Area: 215 sq.m
• Built-up Area: 433 sq.m
• Cost of Construction/Execution: 217.000 €

Words from the designer

"In a Southern suburb of Dortmund, a '40s single-family house with pitched roof is expanded by adding a supplementary apartment. This extension, situated along the street, looks like a sculptural moulded wood block, like a prototype."

View from the street.

"The design depicts the house as both an object and residential building. Solid wood planks are used for the outer walls to form a continuous unit. Roof eaves, drains, chimney or canopy have been abandoned."

[Left] Detail of the building corner [Right] The window are set flush with the facade.

"The windows and doors are set flush with the outside wall and positioned according to the requirements of the inside. The house looks like a minimalist volume, compact and heavy, from which the interior has been peeled out and covered on the outside with surfaces of various materials that in their form and arrangement inspire an incomparable observation."

[Left] View from the 3rd floor patio window [Right] Detail of the window.

"Whoever wants to enter the house has to first walk into a subterranean entrance hall adjacent to the garage. The ambivalent perspective is due to its trapezoid plan as well as to its elevation.

The opposite stairs direct the view to the living room vitrifaction that offers the view into the inner courtyard. Those who are entering the house are first visually acquainted with its centre.

In accordance to the request to maximum usability of the ground space, a typological hybrid was designed between split-levels and standard floors. "

[Left] Kitchen at the 1st floor [Right] View into the kitchen with stairs and up to the gallery.

"The ground and the gallery floor form a flowing unit with separate zones for living, dining, kitchen and working, all connected to the living-area that is over two floors high.

The continuous dark terrazzo floor and an open staircase, fitted in like a sculpture, also stress this unit. The orientation towards the garden varies in the uppermost floor. "

Patio at the 3rd floor.

"Here (at the uppermost floor) is a roof terrace, encircled on all three sides from wooden walls, a completely cut off refuge, that centres the privacy of the house and enables a dialog with the sky.

In the interaction of lightness and gravity, the measure and the appearance separate the house from the neighbouring houses. This is what its specific object quality is based upon."

Credits

• Text by Archifactory.de
• Photographs by Archifactory.de, Gernot Maul, Karin Hessmann
• Compiled and Edited by Varun M Ajani