Garden house

A house for a wonderful garden: rather than an off-the-shelf solution, it is designed to fit into a varied setting. This consists of a classic North German house of red brick with terraces, projections and curves, together with various seating areas in the garden and the adjoining woods. The new garden house is meant to welcome a group of friends or the family, while also serving as a retreat for the residents. It is therefore placed close to the house as the entrance to the garden, where it also quietly watches the evening sun and catches the eye of the neighbourhood.

The garden house consists of a gathering room flanked by two service zones of built-in cabinets that hold everything needed: shelves, cupboards, functional areas and storage for the barbecue. Doors, niches and openings are built into the surfaces of these cabinet zones. The highlight on both sides are the spaces above the cabinets, reached by ladders and used as bunks for overnight stays. From here there is a wonderful view of what is happening in the room or, through the horizontal windows, out into the garden. A floor-to-ceiling glass sliding door separates the garden room from the garden – or opens it up completely, as the doors slide fully into the cabinet walls.

The garden house is built as a timber structure of columns, beams and a bracing timber stud wall. A visible truss spans the large opening in the façade. All surfaces of the interior walls and cabinet zones are clad in light, exposed birch wood. The characteristic lines of the birch multiplex plywood edges are used to accentuate the reveals of the niches. The outer walls are clad in timber lamellas that match the red bricks of the house: the outermost layer of lamellas is stained red, and each further layer towards the interior receives the same red stain in progressively lighter shades. The vertical joints between the lamellas are white, like the light mortar joints of the brickwork. Rounded corners give the garden house an elegant appearance. A red outdoor curtain beneath the roof overhang darkens the garden room or sets the stage for a play – for the new building is more than a garden house: it is a garden theatre.

Structural planning: TRAGFORM Ingenieure