Rauch residential house
The materiality and form of the residential house are direct reactions to the steep south-sloping scarp situation of the slender plot in a landscape context – as if a monolithic block, similar to a piece of abstract and artificial nature, had been pressed out of the earth.
Two clefts articulate the building of rammed earth, wedging it backwards with the scarp and establishing a frontal prelude or welcoming gesture towards the valley. The inside of the house is developed in the form of sequences of individualizable spaces that respond storey-wise to the variable
conditions.
As opposed to more organic, archaic clay architecture the morphology of the building aims towards a certain clarity and sharp-edgedness. The strips of clay bricks that are inserted between the typical clay layers optically stabilise the building structure by emphasising the horizontality and heightening the light and shadow effects of the surface texture.
At a material-atmospheric level the spatial sequence shows a succession that literally ascends from the raw and archaic to distinguished splendour through a balanced overlaying of different treatment processes. Taken as a whole, the house is a laboratory-like experiment, depicting the close planning co-operation between the architect and the master clay builder and client Martin Rauch, culminating in his own hand-construction of the building.
