Rudin House

Rudin House

Architect:	Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron
Year(s) of construction:	1996-1997
Location:	Leymen, High Rhin, France
Coordinates:	47° 29' 31" N, 7° 28' 40" E See on the Map

Sponsor:

Most parts of this article have been translated using the Google automatic translate engine.

Please excuse any mistakes this translation might have and feel free to correct them if you wish to collaborate with our project.

Introduction

Located in a village at the limit of France and Switzerland (Leymen), was one of the earliest works of Herzog & de Meuron, conducted for the art gallery owner Hanspeter Rudin.

At first glance one might say that the shape and external appearance is a very typical home, as we imagined a house in our childhood: the waters of two roof, windows and doors and a great big fireplace. The roof is nothing more than a roof, walls, and both are simple walls forming a single plane where they have perversely doors and windows.

As Moneo once remarked regard to the work, "seems forced and an inevitable reflection on the history, present here, leading to the architects to transform this painful memory, which would be tempted to describe as schizophrenia, causing a coupling with typological melancholy. "

This house provides a rare dialogue between tradition and modernity subverting both while benefiting from their values. If we were to argue whether it is for a project implemented in a serious or a joke I think we would have to explain it as a joke very seriously done with great finesse.

Situation

The house is located at the foot of a hill between houses within a conventional central European private urbanization in the city of Leymen, Upper Rhine, France.

Side street of Rue du Waldeck.

Concept

At home Rudin, Herzog and de Meuron on childhood memories evoke the image of a house, rescuing the most characteristic elements such as the large fireplace, sloping roof, so a single volume. Associating with an elemental simplicity and cleanliness in their finishes, reaching beyond the literalness of imaginatively conceived as a house, exorcised the idea of a primary home to two water to reduce it to a degree zero of iconographic representation.

Since the distance does not differ in terms of volume but its neighboring completely alter their references. The house eludes own parameters of historicalness sweetened hypocritical of the new buildings falsely traditional for them to take only a vision that reflects its abstract geometry and the vision that leads to child in the house that we all recognize.

Counterpoint

The house acts in a dialogue of contrasting situations it is often possible to see in key entertainment.

It is a parallelepiped voluntarily heavy reinforced concrete seen on the other is high soil floating on a tray supported by thin pillars.

It has large windows that open outward without any shame, on the other access is almost secret and precarious under the house.

It has a large deck angle, however the eaves and gutters that correspond to this great cover disappear and rain water slides on the concrete until you reach the pond located in the tray to support a beside the house.

The shape of the roof refers to the world of decks inclined while the material is finishing a vulgar cloth asphalt own a flat deck.

On the one hand is close to the warm childhood dreams, on the other asceticism and the hardness of their materiality is opposed to any romanticism.

The house is symmetrical lengthwise, but the ladder breaks on the inside with a slight shift and omits any verbose dimension to the tour.

The house stands on a tray of thin concrete stroke linear and will ideal, but it contains a side terrace with some classical and vulgar pots superseding any railing that would give volume, and the other side opposed to a terrace sheet of rain water of minimum thickness, perhaps imitation or mockery of the extensive ponds and pools of large summer estates.

Spaces

Inside the house stands out as a central element of transition and interior-exterior and back the great staircase that goes from floor to the ceiling, where the vertical axis of the house and the element that organizes.

This is along the longitudinal axis of the building, leaving the stays on either side of the journey and ends under the light of a large skylight that takes light in terms of economy and the asymmetry caused by the mismatch of the axis of the ridge with the axis of the ladder.

Stays of greater wealth space is precisely at this end of the tour: the main room with his attic and the dream bathroom extremely vertical cross-section.

Structure

You would think that as a bucket of concrete, with concrete walls is an unfinished work very heavy, but this gives us to understand the importance of the work which in turn is contrasted by the support elements that rise up stilts and a way to lighten its presence in the environment, besides being a platform for the house is not lost on the same appearance and illuminating.

This platform also creates an overhang that collects rain water, this being a mirror of both the exterior and pleasant inside the same

Materials

The roof and walls of concrete apparently gave the impression of being a single element, then give us the appearance of continuity for the absence of an eave.

It is defined as a simple, monolithic construction that allows a connection with nature, as is observed as the water covers the walls and not worn or damaged material from the walls.

It highlights the use of modern materials such as concrete and as the old adobe presenting the merger past-present-future as they do these architects in their works.