House P P宅

The original building of House P dates back to 1935. Situated in Kleinmachnow, a quite area outside the city center of Berlin, there are numerous comparable buildings around, and the entire community is surrounded by dense forests, making it a beautiful environment. Before we began this renovation, the building had undergone several modifications, including an expansion of its vestibule. This time, we seek not only to preserve the original building’s character but also to fashion a living space that resonates with our clients—a young, professional couple.

The architectural conservation regulations in Kleinmachnow requires us to unconditionally preserve the main visual elements of the exterior walls, including the color and texture of the paint, the form and material of the roof, and even the size ratio and construction nodes of the windows. Although the client desires greater transparency for the building, we must incorporate decorative window mullions on the new insulated windows, dividing the large glass panes into smaller sections, reminiscent of the style in 1935.

However, we still made some modifications to the interior and exterior of the building as much as the regulations allowed, presenting our renovation and previous additions in a more modern way, which also highlights the charm of the old building. To expand the area on the second floor, within the allowable area limit, we added bay windows to both sides of the sloping roof. They, along with the vestibule expanded in the 1990s, are “newly grown” volumes. We chose larch panel as the facade material, allowing them to harmonize with the old building’s earth-yellow painted walls while clearly indicating that they were later additions, more modern blocks. To make the “modernity” clearer, we even flattened the sloping roof of the vestibule, restoring it to a simple box shape, and replaced the small windows resembling fortress loopholes with a more modern horizontal long window, the maximum within the area and form allowed by the strict conservation regulations.

We made more radical changes to the interior. The ground floor is used as a living room, dining area, and kitchen. We removed all non-load-bearing partition walls to make the space open and transparent. The original floor was preserved and renovated, and the staircase area retained the original terrazzo and traces left after the walls were removed, with concrete filling the gaps, preserving and presenting the historical layers of folds in this way. The second floor retained the original partition walls, with four rooms divided into bedrooms, two children’s rooms, and a bathroom. The space under the roof was also utilized, connected to the two children’s rooms. Although the slope up and down is a bit steep, it has become secret gardens for the two daughters.