The transformation creates a non-hierarchical collage, combining plain and grand materials with constructional traces from changing times. It presents a building that explores its own past and acknowledges to be just one stage in a continuous process, which is still ongoing.
The house was originally built in 1951, standing as a classic example of Danish post-war housing: an unpretentious cubic box, two floors atop a basement, evenly distributed windows, red brickwork, and a pitched roof.
This archetypical typology remains, but alterations and their traces gradually appear. On the outside, new wider openings towards the garden are obvious while flat arches over the infilled windows are preserved as subtle reminiscences of past conditions.
The existing building was regarded as a mine. Existing elements are interpreted anew, and what is removed is merged with what is added, e.g., pieces of crushed brick from the façade being used for the terrazzo stair treads and flooring.
Every intervention occurs with varying apparency; from the crushed bricks and the maintained fragments of flooring to the reworked exterior masonry and the insertion of three interposed vertical brick cores.
These provide essential functions of the house: installations, circulation, and storage. Simultaneously, they determine the spatial layout, creating fluid spaces and soft transitions, both indoors and towards the outside, characterized by connections rather than thresholds.
The transformation creates a non-hierarchical collage, combining plain and grand materials with constructional traces from changing times. It presents a building that explores its own past and acknowledges to be just one stage in a continuous process, which is still ongoing.
The house was originally built in 1951, standing as a classic example of Danish post-war housing: an unpretentious cubic box, two floors atop a basement, evenly distributed windows, red brickwork, and a pitched roof.
This archetypical typology remains, but alterations and their traces gradually appear. On the outside, new wider openings towards the garden are obvious while flat arches over the infilled windows are preserved as subtle reminiscences of past conditions.
The existing building was regarded as a mine. Existing elements are interpreted anew, and what is removed is merged with what is added, e.g., pieces of crushed brick from the façade being used for the terrazzo stair treads and flooring.
Every intervention occurs with varying apparency; from the crushed bricks and the maintained fragments of flooring to the reworked exterior masonry and the insertion of three interposed vertical brick cores.
These provide essential functions of the house: installations, circulation, and storage. Simultaneously, they determine the spatial layout, creating fluid spaces and soft transitions, both indoors and towards the outside, characterized by connections rather than thresholds.
