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The home establishes a connection with its landscape, integrating with its setting while capturing views of Lake Constance
Located on a small lot in a semi-rural setting with fields of apple trees and sunflowers that gently slope towards Lake Constance, Kronbühl is a residence that seems to emerge from the ground and rise up into the sky, capturing spectacular views of the landscape around the small municipality of Bodman-Ludwigshafen, on the German side of the lake.
Oppenheim Architecture drew its inspiration for this single-family home from the beauty of its setting, creating an overlap of volumes that seem to rise out of the ground and into the landscape with clearly defined shapes and colors.
Taking advantage of the elevation of the lot, the home has three floors, each with a different façade treatment. The lush garden that surrounds the home touches the edges of the architecture and covers the lower level, which reaches outwards with large cave-like openings. The three volumes, each a different shape and size, are staggered and misaligned on top of each other, creating large overhangs that almost seem to be diving towards the lake. As the home rises towards the sky, the façades become more open. The lower floor, which is more closed off and integrated into the ground, is a light volume with a bush-hammered concrete finish and regular full-height openings. As these openings extend upwards, they transform into light, transparent triangles. The almost fully glazed walls on the top floor are enclosed by a timber shell that envelops the volume with numerous vertical fins, giving the interiors both privacy and shade.
The interiors have been designed to maximize visual and spatial continuity with the garden. The windows on the second level have thin, minimalist frames and slide back into cavities in the concrete walls, connecting the interiors with the garden.
Inside, the finishes reflect the façade treatments – the bush-hammered concrete, the vertical timber fins, and the timber roof finish – creating a continuum that blurs the divisions of the design.
The natural landscape surrounding the home becomes a part of the house itself, with the garden recalling the beauty of the setting through its colors, gentle slopes, and an outdoor swimming pool that reproduces the presence of water as a distinctive element of the entire area around the lake.
>>> Also read about Copcake House, a home overlooking the lake of the same name near New York
Location: Bodman-Ludwigshafen, Germany
Architects: Oppenheim Architecture
Interior Designer: Bernd Gruber
Completion: 2022
Client: Private
Build-up Area: 1,000 m2
Structural Consultant: Baustatik Relling GmbH
Landscape Consultant: Enea Landscape Architecture
Photography by Zooey Braun, courtesy of Oppenheim Architecture
