Holzrausch and Falk von Tettenborn Architekten have realized a villa in Grünwald near Munich, where the design included even the smallest details.
Holzrausch and Falk von Tettenborn Architekten have realized a villa in Grünwald near Munich, where the design included even the smallest details.
“We really crawled into every detail of this project,” says Sven Petzold, describing the obsession that he and his team at Holzrausch displayed when fitting out the interior of a villa in Grünwald near Munich. The interior design specialists planned and realized an interior that strikes an exciting balance between material diversity and uniformity, between reduction of form and opulence.
The new building, designed by Falk von Tettenborn Architekten, consists of three clearly separated structures that also differentiate the building functionally: The two-storey main house accommodates the living area, dining room and kitchen on the first floor and the family bedrooms on the upper floor. A prestigious entrance hall connects this structure with the adjacent guest and office wing. Pent roofs and rendered façades make both volumes appear as a visual unit from a distance. In front of the guest wing on the street side is the bathhouse, which houses the indoor pool. In contrast to the other two building sections, a natural stone façade determines the appearance here.
The villa was built by Munich real estate developer Heinz Schlehuber. His expertise and experience significantly influenced the design of the villa. “Heinz had a precise idea of what he expected from his new house,” says Sven Petzhold about the collaboration. “That was extremely pleasant, because it allowed him to precisely define what functions each individual room should take on.”
For example, Schlehuber wanted a spacious foyer for his house because he wanted to receive customers here and therefore wanted the area to be more than just a passageway and access space. Holzrausch responded to this requirement with a design that incorporates elements of both a hallway and a living room in its materiality and appearance. The dark, warm color scheme that binds all the materials together creates a basic motif that runs through the entire house. A front door made of black steel forms the prelude. Holzrausch picks up on this material on the wall to the office and guest wing with narrow metal strips that fix a wall covering made of gray leather. The opposite wall, on the other hand, is paneled with anthracite lacquered ash. Integrated into the paneling is a door that leads into one of Holzrausch’s typical room cells. These interior spaces, which accommodate utility and storage areas, are often what make the minimalist look of the Holzrausch interior possible in the first place. The company refers to this type of room-in-room solution as “architectural furniture”, which is usually created as elaborate carpentry work. In the Grünwald villa, the architectural furniture is used to house the wardrobe inside and to provide cupboards in the outer walls for three adjoining rooms: the dining room, the kitchen and the staircase.
While the floors throughout the rest of the house are made of smoked oak, the foyer is covered in gray-brown terracotta tiles, which are laid in a herringbone pattern and shaped like rods. In the center of the room is a large pouf piece of furniture designed and built for the room by Holzrausch. Directly above it, a huge round lamp is set into the ceiling, its main design element being reflective brass lamellas. The lighting object was designed and manufactured by PSLab from Beirut, who are responsible for the entire lighting concept.
The guest WC, which is accessible from the foyer, is a particular gem. Sven Petzold and the Holzrausch team have made practically all the surfaces here from the same spectacularly cloudy natural stone. Even the interior door was covered with the stone. In order to dispense with a flush plate, the mechanism is triggered by pulling a specially made cord. The lighting is concealed behind the mirror and the light enters the room through a gap around the perimeter.
A double-leaf smoked glass door leads from the foyer into the living and dining area. There, a protruding shelf with an integrated gas fireplace separates the two zones. It is composed of laser-cut black steel panels and rests on a solid block of Nagelfluh as a base. Holzrausch went to extreme lengths in the construction of the shelf. The steel plates were visibly mortised together and the base was sunk into the Nagelfluh block to create a flat surface. The shelving compartments were partially filled with gray-patinated mirrors, creating a fascinating interplay of views and reflections. The rear of the living area forms a shelving wall, which the planners had covered with fabric.
The dining area has a wide passageway to the kitchen, which can be closed by means of sliding elements. Like the kitchen fittings, these are made of lacquered ash. All fittings are made of burnished brass. The worktops are made of solid Nagelfluh blocks. The kitchen is divided into two functional zones: While a breakfast area and a wet bar for preparing drinks – including a wine fridge and boiling water tap from Quooker – are arranged towards the dining area, the rear of the room is used for actual cooking. A large cooking island forms the centerpiece here. The two kitchen areas are separated by the passageway into the staircase, with a sliding ash door creating a visual connection. The staircase is designed as an independent room unit. A cross-floor shelving wall gives it the character of a library or collection room. Here too, anthracite-lacquered ash wood for the shelving and smoked oak for the stairs and floors define the spatial impression.
On the upper floor, a long corridor leads to the bedrooms. In one children’s room, the bed was designed as a bunk, while in the other, it was arranged on a high platform with large drawers and compartments built in as storage space. The desks run on one side in a guide rail and can therefore be moved around the room. The parents’ area is located behind the children’s area. The master bathroom is lined with large basalt slabs. Here too, the Holzrausch planners’ attention to detail is evident in elements such as the flush transitions between the natural stone and plaster surfaces. “Our design idea for the bathroom,” explains Sven Petzold, “was that the material thickness of the basalt should not be visible anywhere.” The panels for cladding the bathtub block were also mitred to create the impression of a solid cube. The base units and door frame are made of smoked oak, while the shower cubicle is made of Parsol gray glass. As in the entire house, Vola fittings were also installed in the master bathroom – here in matt black. The fixtures in the adjoining dressing room are also made of smoked oak. Like the wall cladding, the wardrobe fronts are made of bronzed mirrors. A shelf was made from burnished brass.
“We often limit ourselves to a few recurring materials in our projects,” says Sven Petzold. “Here, instead, we wanted to achieve a broad mix of materials that is held together by a unifying color scheme and thus has a harmonious effect.” In terms of the materials used, the Holzrausch team made a conscious choice away from the mainstream – for example, by opting for lacquered ash wood, as Petzold explains: “Unlacquered oak is currently the absolute standard for wooden fixtures. We wanted to show that there are so many more fascinating possibilities. The color and material concept that we developed here, for example, is based on models from the 1950s.”
Only in a few places does the interior design break away from the predominant dark color scheme. For example, in the utility room on the upper floor, which Holzrausch bathed in bright orange. Or in the shower of the bathhouse, where a Vola fitting in bright yellow forms an exciting contrast to the speckled gray natural stone used for the wall cladding. In this respect, the planners went the furthest with the bathroom in the guest area. It seems to have been taken directly from a villa design by Gio Ponti. Geometrically patterned tiles in white and blue meet a washbasin and a brass tap. The entire bathroom design was calculated in such a way that not a single tile had to be cut, so that the spatial tile decor is not interrupted in any way. “I admit that our love of detail sometimes borders on fetishism,” admits Sven Petzold. “But this is not the result of compulsive behavior, but of our skills and the knowledge we have acquired in 20 years of Holzrausch.”
The architecture firm Atelier Štěpán has also completed a villa in the Moravian-Silesian town of Nový Jičín. Find out more here.
