Schreber House designed by AMUNT is a two-storey extension which was added to the house to cater to the spatial needs of the new owner family with three children.
This small 1920s estate house with a large garden — acquired by the clients in the winter of 2010 — is located on the northern periphery of the city of Aachen, Germany. A two-storey, fifty sqm extension was added to the seventy sqm house to cater to the spatial needs of the new owner family with three children. The original building is a simple brick structure with a clinker façade. One of the main questions during the design phase was, "how to extend?".
The intention was that the extension and the partially new roof convert the existing simple building structure into a generous, open, compact residential home, which carried forward the simplicity of the existing materials using contemporary means. The dark red clinker façade of the original building interlocks with the red-brown unplastered pumice and light-weight concrete bricks of the extension; it interprets the existing material in a contemporary manner and combines with the original in colour to form a new compact building volume. 1+1=1.
This architecture strives towards specialness rather than streamlined densification; it breaks conventional perception spaces and patterns to take forward the raw, brash charm of this former workers’ housing estate. Its appearance clearly stands in contrast to the mainstream too smooth and too perfect. Cramped spaces have been transformed into the expanse and lightness of a sense of contemporary dwelling.
