Galerie und Atelierhaus
The gallery and studio buildings at Lotharstrasse make the complex structure of urban spatial types legible as squares, courtyards and semi-public and private interior spaces, as if seen through a magnifying glass. The ensemble is situated in the direct vicinity of the Haus Hundertacht and is faced with the same heterogeneous context , to which it initially reacts by coding the exterior spaces. While the neighbouring building reflects the idea of the city in the interior sequence of rooms, this pair of houses, which is extended by framing a 19th-century sanatorium at its centre to form a triad, represents a square that is situated away from the street. This square, with partially sunken interior courtyards around the gallery house, accommodates the public life between the buildings. A basalt base, into which benches are integrated here and there, interlocks the buildings with each other. It forms part of the gallery and studio houses, as well as the portico and outside staircase of the old building, and also reaches the ground floor of the adjoining northwestern terrace-end house. In this way, the chthonic material interlocks the buildings with the nearby environment of the city. The studio building near the street continues a series of residential buildings at a joint between closed and open development , while the gallery building is situated in a more recessed position on the slope, pointing the way towards the centre of the ensemble. Symbolically marked by the cantilever arm of the freight elevator, it accommodates the art location in its exhibition wing on two floors. By contrast, the studio building is orientated towards the street and
has more private purposes. It is thereby placed in front of the inner square, acting as a kind of filter towards the street space. Like the neighbouring Haus Hundertacht, the choice of materials has a symbolic level that above all performs an urban development task: Inside the gallery building, fine wooden and stone flooring ennobles the exhibits, but its actual power is drawn from the exterior space, where the base binds the buildings together and interweaves them with their surroundings
