Rudin House (Casa Rudin/Project 128)

Brittany Ewing

• Date: Project: 1996 Realization: 1997
• Designer: Herzog & de Meuron
• Location: 3 Rue du Waldeck Leymen, Haut-Rhin, France
• Size:
  • Footprint: 1,722-square-foot
  • Site area: 10,11-square-foot
  • Gross Floor area: 2798-square-foot.
• Clients: Hanspeter Rudin
• Site characteristics: Rolling hills and plains surround the developmen. The weather in France varies from hot summers to cold winters that bring snow.  In the spring, it rains a majority of the time and in the fall the climate cools.
• Cost: £1,175,000 approx (€1,300,000) … about $1,739,270.00
• Configuration:
  • Felt lined roof surface and the unfinished concrete facades flow almost seamlessly
  • The house is designed with a simple shape that looks like a house a young child could draw. 
  • Illusion of floating house, by placing on platform
  • 4 pillars that stand at each corner of the rectangular form to support the platform. 
  • The steps where one would enter the building also provide a central support so that the weight is balanced between the supports.
• Day lighting: Large windows allow light to pass and fill a large amount of the house.
• Materials:
  • Concrete
  • Steel
  • Wood
  • Glass
• Structure:
  • Supported on a platform with over hangs
  • The base of the house consists of pillars and a central staircase for support. 
  • A platform that provides living space outside of the house and acts as a balance to distribute the weight of the actual house that sits on top. 
  • On top of the platform lie the house and the roof.  All of which are constructed together without separations.
• Innovations:
  • Lifted off sloping site, making it levitate visually (no other pre-20th-century building does this)
  • the architects made a simple concept house unique by giving it a floating bottom.  While the heavy foundation has a light feeling to it because of its suspension.
• Significant Features:
  • Evokes “a child’s drawing of a house”
  • Lifted off sloping site, making it levitate visually
  • Hidden front door in center of structure
  • On one narrow end, of a the platform that raises it, outside the sliding doors of the living room, a shallow cantilevered pool, edged with stepping stones (mimicking a Japanese garden)
  • No gutters & down spouts, metal drip strip that feeds water to reflecting pool.
  • Pale-gray facades expected to be weather stained and to be converted into moss and lichens (melding it ever more firmly into its bucolic (pastoral or rural)
  • Concrete walls emphasize heaviness and materiality while strategic positioning on four small pillars and stair case to allow it to appear light.
• Description – The simple monolithic building is exposed to wind and weather; rainwater runs down it as it would run down a boulder. The unfinished concrete walls of the façades emphasize the weight and materiality of the building, but being raised off the ground as if on stilts lightens its appearance. The projecting decks at the sides of the house reinforce this image of lightness and of suspension over the landscape. Fruit trees and meadows underline the agricultural character of the garden that is barely distinguishable from the surrounding landscape. The interior of the house is characterized by contrasting spatial qualities and materials, such as concrete, adobe, and colors such as silver and pink. The staircase which reaches up to the roof is especially spectacular.

Environmental Audit

• Solar Orientation: The front face of the building faces north.  The sides of the house are east and west therefore making  half of the light by natural light in the early morning and late afternoon.  The north and south face of the house have the biggest windows.
• Day Lighting: Natural Light comes in through the large windows.
• Water management: Residents gather water from the water well that is in the housing development.  Water is collected in a well and then redistributed to residents.
• Insulation: Concrete and small uses of fiber glass deep within the walls of the house insulate the house so it is not freezing cold in the winter and dangerously hot in the summer.
• Materials:
  • Concrete
  • Steel
  • Wood
  • Glass
• Maintenance: standard maintenance includes regular cleanings inside the house and occasionally washing the concrete exterior.

Bibliography

Filler, M. (2000). Essence [rudin house, leymen, france]. House Beautiful, 142(11), 204-207. Web. 14 Jan 2013.

<http://ezproxy.philau.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/55737521?accountid=28402>

Herzog and de Meuron, . "House in Leymen, Leymen, Haut-Rhin, France." Herzog and de Mueron Homepage. Herzog

and de Mueron, 1997. Web. 14 Jan 2013.

<http://www.herzogdemeuron.com/index/projects/complete-works/126-150/128-house-inleymen.html>.

Herzog, , and Meuron De. "Rudin House." Architecture and Urbanism Tokyo. (1998): 56-69. Print.

Romanelli, Marco . "J. Herzog E P. De Meuron a Leymen: Casa Rudin: Abitare Il Non Finito = Rudin House: Experiencing

the Unfinished [france]." Abitare. (1998). 76-83. Print.