House at the Schopfacker
From the 16th century until the industrial revolution, Trogen in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden, like a large part of Appenzellerland, became prosperous through the sale of weaving and embroidery. Above all, the Zellweger family, which made a fortune with the linen trade at times, set unmistakable signs with the Zellweger palaces in Trogen.
The striking landscape of the village Trogen in the strong relief of the landscape always demanded a compact settlement form. Row of houses with mostly dense juxtaposed residential buildings are based on the simple laws of optimal sunning in steeply rising or falling position to the southeast (upper and lower village), or with slope-accompanying position directed down the valley to the south (Vorderdorf, Halden, Schopfacker).
In 2011, a farmhouse on a property on Schopfacker was almost completely destroyed by fire and wanted to be replaced. The parcel located in a „townscape-protection-zone of national importance“, makes the highest demands on the replacement.
In the development proposal for the invited study the settlement of two structures was provided on site. In a first phase, the village-side structure of the later ensemble was realized.
A simple and stringent localization of a new structure marks again a kind of "capstone" on the eastern edge of the village of Trogen. Coming from the village Heiden, the building reads "the first house of Trogen" and a self-assured start to the dense, towering settlement with its traditionally narrow lanes.
The new house grows out of the tradition of a historical order, which characterize many townscapes in Appenzell. His architectural design language takes on a clear reference to traditional, upper middle-class living in the Appenzell region.
The house is made of stone and wood. The building rests on a massive pedestal and appears above as a wooden construction. The new interpretation of the traditional regional wooden façade reveals a massive wooden structure, which shows itself plastically as a relief. Within this grid is a perforated facade incorporated, which allows targeted views.
Themes such as those of the tectonics, the relief, the massive base and the articulated wooden facade were deliberately differentiated. The realized project testifies to the intensive examination of building form, structure, façade shape and the material for the construction of a new bourgeois residential building.
