The owner of House Am Walt, a successful property developer and aficionado of modern architecture, first contacted Dieter Vander Velpen architects in 2019. At the time, he had already engaged architect Jürgen Geiselhart, who had designed a beautifully structured villa in a green setting just outside a German city, and was looking for an architect who could translate this framework into a unique yet warm interior where he and his wife could fully enjoy their passion for nature, art, architecture and design and where they could accommodate their collections.
Translation of the shell
The home is entirely erected in a U-shaped concrete shell that allows for the spacious and often double-height interior rooms. This structure creates beautiful vistas from one leg of the home, where the living spaces reside, across a patio with pool, to the other leg, where the client's vintage car collection is displayed. This type of vista’s are truly unique so preserving and enhancing these lines of sight in the interior was key in the design.
To enhance the double-height space, a central statement element was designed that combines the functions of stairs, library and fireplace; it is a key eye-catcher in the home and also becomes almost an additional work of art in the space alongside the paintings and sculptures from the owner's collection that are displayed in this foyer/art gallery.
A circular skylight casts a spot of light that migrates through the foyer throughout the day, breaking the rigid orthogonal grid of the architecture. Throughout the interior, these types of round shapes were repeated often, including in the choice of furniture, with pieces such as the Vladimir Kagan sofa, the custom-designed desk and Bieke Castelijn's table.
Materialization
The facade was clad in Muschelkalk natural stone with panels of aluminum in bronze tones. So it was a first natural step for the studio to bring these materials seamlessly from outside to inside. The Muschelkalk was continued from the terrace into the interior, not only in all the floors but also in other elements such as the staircase, fireplace and kitchen. Alternating between a sweetened, slightly darker and smoother, and a sandblasted, rougher and lighter finish creates a captivating interplay in the interior that cumulates in the monumental staircase, where the two finishes were used alternately.
The bronze tones of the exterior were translated into the interior in a number of bronzed brass details such as door and cabinet handles, shelf finishes in the kitchen, entrance hall and dressing room, and fireplaces in the foyer and living space.
The material palette was finished with one type of wood, in this case walnut, which also appears throughout the house in various ways. In the kitchen, we see it in both plain and in slats on the cladding of walls and cabinets.
The only exception to this materialization is the master bathroom where a Verde Picasso marble was used on all surfaces with the exception of the two huge glass panes with minimalist window frames that draw in the surrounding forrest in which the home is located. This effect is enhanced in the adjoining bedroom with a bed frame completely covered in a green suede and repeated in the kitchen with a custom dining table in the same marble.
Gesamtkunstwerk
A number of signature details were also developed for the home, a unique visual language specific to the project, which is carried through in all the details. In this project, the studio went very far in executing this, from a bronze detailing on the side of the walnut shelves to the cabinet and door handles that were custom-designed for the home and found throughout, even in the sliding doors between the bedroom and dressing room, framed in bronze, inlaid with walnut and upholstered in raw silk. It are these subtle details that create a harmonious experience for everyone moving through the home.
In addition, there are some very complex statement pieces such as the base of the fireplace in the living space, where a floor plate in solid bronze transitions into an upward circular curve, alternating with a layer of Muschel lime, a second layer of bronze, a see-through fireplace in glass and finally an upper finish again in bronze.
This philosophy of bringing together different materials and techniques in a very complex way is a modern interpretation of the Art Deco method. One creates, as it were, a Gesamtkunstwerk by combining different professional expertises, and attuning all aspects to each other perfectly.
