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... sind in den markanten Türmen untergebracht • ... are in the striking towers. Grundriss Erdgeschoss • Ground floor plan

A rchitects build houses: walls, a roof over one’s head. Yet, as a rule, houses only village in Seckach, each adolescent has his or her own room. Eight of them are or-
ganized into three groups. The three caregiving families live in separate units. There
become true homes because of the people who live in them. Father and mother
make a parental home. If the father and the mother, if the family no longer exists, are connecting doors between the residential groups and the family flats in the stair-
has become a problem, how can a house then still turn into a home? Is architecture case towers which also symbolically mark the transition towards the outside. In ad-
able to achieved this? Is architecture able to be more than just merely housing? And dition, each residential group as well as the caregiving families have their own, pro-
if yes, how so? Dea Ecker and Robert Piotrowski have found the answers. With the tected outside areas designed as deep loggias and expanding the existing common
means of architecture, they designed in Seckach a place which really wants to be a rooms towards the outside. All the loggias are oriented in different compass directi-
home and also is one. They did not have many models for this! Two residential buil- ons and are never adjacent.
dings constitute the new ensemble of the children’ and adolescents’ village in Sek-
kach. One of them surrounds an open courtyard in a U shape; the other encloses the Architecture for dreaming
space towards the fourth side. A place has been marked. It is limited but not closed.
A small cosmos of its own has thus been designed. The yard with two young trees The design by Dea Ecker and Robert Piotrowski is thus composed of cleverly consi-
at the periphery is the central element of the architects’ design. What they set as an dered and delicately designed nuances of spatial separation. In their sum, they thus
example here, the interplay of closing and opening, between community and indi- add up to a harmonious and atmospherically dense ensemble where the residents
vidual freedom, is a fundamental idea of the whole building and its purpose. The can become at home because the architecture offers so much. At any time, everyone
large hipped roofs of the two residential buildings reach down low with the narrow here finds the room which suits him or her and thus also the desired closeness or
sides. They almost appear to want to touch the ground. They are protective roofs in the desired distance respectively to the community with the others. And the archi-
the best sense of the word. The towers rising up from the roofs – providing light for tects even thought of a room for dreaming. In his Poétique de l'Espace, the French
the staircases – give the architecture an individual appearance. They are unique fea- philosopher Gaston Bachelard assigned to the most different areas of human thin-
tures and a striking addition to the buildings. For the residents, they can serve as king, feeling and acting their own rooms and objects inside a fictitious house. For
anchors of perception and memory since, together with the roof areas and the faça- instance, he located the subconscious in the basement; the wishes and desires in
des, they are able to produce associations. Wood chosen as the material ultimately chests and cupboard. According to Bachelard, the ideal place for dreaming, however,
also contributes to creating a feeling of being at home. It is a warm, supple material would be the attic with its slanted walls which close above the dreamer like a tent.
which awakens above all positive responses in the residents. It yields, is not hard, The attic is the topmost room of a house; nowhere else can one get physically closer
cold and rejecting in the way of concrete or brick. At the same time, it ages along to the sky. Dea Ecker and Robert Piotrowski have also turned the roof spaces of their
with the residents, becomes more mature, more grownup, gains a patina. Growing ensemble into rooms for dreaming. Instead of using the large spaces for additional
up also means discovering oneself and getting to know oneself. This requires free accommodations, storage rooms or the building technology which other architects
spaces – regarding thinking but, in the end, also when it comes to architecture. If like to install there, they made the roof spaces freely available to the residents. The
adolescents demand a room of their own, they do this driven by the need of finding spaces invite to play together and frolic but also to crawl into the most remote corner
their own place in the world. In the new extension of the children’ and adolescents’ with a blanket and just dream. Good architecture cannot achieve anything more!

AIT 7/8.2021 • 115