When a schoolfriend told me he had bought a house in the countryside outside Düsseldorf, both of us had no idea what a journey we would be embarking on.

More than a century of shrewdness had created an array of 35 rooms, most of them small, low-ceilinged, dark and sometimes damp. There was an unusable vault. The structure of the house was invisibly boarded up behind massive amounts of DIY-paneling. Crucial parts of the old load-bearing beams had cack-handedly been fixed to accomodate the handicrafted construction.

Scratching our heads I proceeded to inventarise the status quo and to prepare the challenging permit request: the house is situated in a nature protection area and only legally tolerated (due to its existence). Luckily the building authorities could be convinced of our approach. And then careful restructuring began…

After four years, what came out of the scaffolding was a family dream home. Only through the dedication of all parties involved (especially the client and his family), we were able to achieve such high standards.

House HW, Düsseldorf, 2019