How would you answer the following question: What if a ground floor simply has too many walls? Thought of an answer? If you have, you can now match it up against the one the Swiss firm of architects Freiluft came up with. Couldn’t be easier really, little short of trivial in fact: just leave the walls out. Which is what they proceeded to do with the house at Hubacherweg 22 in Liebefeld not far from Berne. The outcome is anything but trivial, though. How come? The answer to this is simple too. Freiluft didn’t stop at removing the walls; instead, they added or, as they would put it, “implanted” something new. Insert a red heart and a panorama window and, Bob’s your uncle, the converted ground floor leaps into life.
Looking through the panorama window onto the newly fashioned, roomy living/dining area, one’s gaze is magnetically drawn towards an organic looking something in the middle of the room. Organic is not far off the mark, either, since the something involved is consciously suggestive of the shape of the human heart. The installation is a luminescent, pulsating, warmth-emitting island unit that lends fresh verve to what had previously been a rather dowdily ordinary layout.
“This was a microscopically small conversion of the ground floor in a semi-detached house into which plenty of light-hearted detail has nevertheless been packed”, as Freiluft architect Martin Klopfenstein explains. The contrast between the straightforward and the rather more exacting was quite consciously sought. All trace of ordinariness has been cast overboard, the out-of-the-ordinary holds sway. Vivid green internal door meets bronze door handle, gaudy red kitchen units meet classy white structured wallpaper. There’s a veritable “clash of materials” to be beheld here: from unprepossessing to classy, from old to new. Mr Klopfenstein readily admits that he and his fellow architects have done one or two rather quirky things here. But that’s precisely why it’s worth going beyond just staring through the panorama window and bravely setting foot inside this unusual red heart scenario.
The sight afforded upon entry prior to the conversion was a common one. Narrow hall, down to the cellar on the right, small loo, fitted kitchen, living room on the left. That was then. And now? Access to the cellar is still to the right. But that’s about all that hasn’t changed. Anyone coming through the front door is almost immediately embraced by a large open space. It’s bright, it’s unusual and it’s colourful. And what is that thing in the middle of the room? A kitchen? A toilet? An oven? Or is it really an organism? A bit of all those things actually. A combination of cooking range, guests’ lavatory and hearth that has such powerful emanations as to render the intimation of something living quite reasonable.
The chromatic point of departure for this “combination” is red. The MDF-based red cupboards for the kitchen unit, red walls enclosing the guests’ loo and red panel on the ceiling, which replicates the curves of the cooking unit, are modern, homogeneous and expressive in appearance. This unity of redness is abruptly ended upon opening the door to the guests’ loo. The inside of the door and the walls are vivid green and just scream at you. Said vivid green has also found its way onto one or two above-plaster pipes or steel supports to set mind-jolting spatial accents. The oven, which appears to be seeking a direct link to the “heart” pipe, is of a colour to match the anthracite of the cooking unit work surface.
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Despite its unwonted forms and hues - or is it precisely because of them - the island unit has a self-assured, cohesive and, indeed, organic presence within the space. Although rudiments of the previous spatial layout are still discernible - a line indicating the old wall runs along the floor and ceiling of the new ground floor whilst also explaining why one part of the floor features floor-boards and the other grey stone - the organism has given rise to a completely new experience of home living.
Curving forms define the effect of the space. And the FSB door lever handle that got to contribute to this out-of-the-ordinary conversion is likewise curved. The Freiluft architects opted for the 1023 model in polished waxed bronze together with the model 1731 rose and the 1735 0054 variant for the bathroom furniture. Recourse has been had to a piece of design history in that the design selected has distinct overtones of the “Ulm door handle” and by going for the “bronze” variant, what’s more, a contrast is created that elicits yet another facet from the “coronary” organism. The door handle for such a project needed to be top notch, needed to be pleasant to handle, needed to be classy and classic. And thus it can almost be regarded as a minor act of deference towards the 1023 model that the architects see these very qualities as being combined in it.
So what remains to be said about such an unusual conversion? Perhaps the number of nerves architect Klopfenstein says it cost them: three, to be precise. Not many for such a project, he feels. Given the “quirkiness” of the conversion work, one certainly has to agree.
Photos: Adrian Moser
