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Werner Sobek is our new favorite architect from Germany.
'H 16' is a wonderful modernist glass house.
The residential building 'H16' consists of two contrasting cubes responding to the particular situation on the inclined plot. The transparent, all-glass cube features an open living space with a flexible ground plan and highly insulating triple glazing (individual pane dimensions: 2,36 x 3,63 m) to facilitate a pleasant room climate and the greatest possible transparency.
The black cube is constructed from prefabricated architectural concrete sections and accommodates the private rooms, thus ensuring intimacy and possibilities for retreat. A dense hedge at street level shields the glass cube from view. The ensemble is augmented by a light-coloured cube, which is visually connected to the residential building by a steel terrace and houses the garage and engineering.
A specially adapted climate concept facilitates emission-free heating and air conditioning. The utilization of ground heat (geothermal heating), in connection with a heat pump system, mechanical prime ventilation and a photovoltaic system ensures that the edifice can do without fossil fuels altogether: in energy terms, the building is entirely self-sufficient.
Philosophy from Werner Sobek:
Architecture which claims to formulate an attitude appropriate to our time and the future, must be a form of architecture that finds its forms and materials not by reference to traditional forms and materials. We should not ask "how did we use to work and live" but "how shall we work and live in the future". The answer to this question requires an unconditional anticipation of what the future holds in store - a method which occasionally may lead us in the wrong direction but which is the only way in terms of being intellectually justifiable. Or, in the words of Hegel "...that the fear of being wrong constitutes an error in itself".
The architecture of our own time and the future must exhibit a radically different, viz. positive, attitude to the natural environment and its users and to its inherent technology.
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