Urban villa in Grunewald, Berlin

The family had spent 15 years living in a single-storey house with a flat hipped roof and a rather cellular arrangement of the interiors. Thanks to the renovation, the house has now offers greater flexibility and more private space, and at the same time, harnesses the potential of its land's decisive location at the edge of Berlin’s Grunewald quarter. A distinctive feature of the urban villa are its facades, lined with limestone from Dietfurt, one of South Germany’s oldest quarries, as well as brick masonry from Belgium, plastered with light-coloured lime mortar.

The project embodies the kind of architecture that connects itself to the surrounding landscape in a natural way. A central atrium serving as the heart of the house was developed to create a balance between intimacy, openness and connection. This centralised design enables fluid transitions between the house's different areas, and provides a direct connection to nature.

Large skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows let the daylight flood into the rooms, creating a bright and inviting atmosphere inside. The architecture thus brings about an interplay of light and shadow, inviting the house's natural environment into its interiors.

Natural materials and high-quality surfaces highlight the house's distinctive character. The selection of the materials emphasises its exclusivity and proximity to nature. The wooden planks stand out in particular: thanks to the special direction in which they were cut, they produce fine, straight lines that create an elegant and, at the same time, calm structure in the rooms. These planks, with an impressive length of almost three metres, stand for exclusive Swiss quality, as a symbol of masterful craftsmanship.