Heide von Beckerath Alberts Architekten   Berlin

This Berlin-based firm was founded in 1996 by three partners : Tim Heide, Verena von Beckerath and Andrew Alberts. The exhibition presents projects completed between 1996 and 1999 that trace the firm’s development and design methods, built primarily around the project « Wunschhaus # 1, » completed in Hamburg in autumn 1999.

This project embodies a twofold reflection on architecture as both dwelling and product. This single-family house, standardized and marketed by a major German company, calls into question the demands of modern housing and the various possible ways of life tied to the suburban-house cliché.

« Typologically this house is without doubt the most innovative in the competition. It starts from a concentrated core living area with a second layer of functional rooms arranged around it. Two rooms on the ground floor, two on the upper floor, functional rooms and communication areas are on the outside. In this the interaction between the inner and outer areas is particularly important and provokes the inhabitants to devise new rituals for living together. This exciting new inner conception of a family house is not at all obvious in the appearance and elevations of the house.

(Original text of 2000, machine translated in 2026.)