Luxembourg-based architecture practice Studio Hertweck has completed a family house on a steep slope on the edge of the buildable land of Sinzig-Westum, a German municipality between Bonn and Koblenz. 

Called Röhrig House, the 182-square-metre house features a continuous terrace that climbs the building towards the valley, it helps to cut the geometry in a horizontal way. 

The Röhrig House was realized as part of a series of hillside houses designed by Studio Hertweck in the German Rhine Valley. 

The client, a young family with one child, wanted to have generous interior and exterior shared areas, in combination with a rather classical program: two children's bedrooms, a home office, a parents' bedroom, and two bathrooms.

In order to translate this program in an economic way, Studio Hertweck has inscribed a very simple cube into the slope. Garage and storage rooms were accommodated on the ground floor, the children's bedrooms with a bathroom on the first floor. 

On the second floor, an open living area was created, which opens onto a terrace towards the valley and at the back onto a garden. On the third floor, the architect located the parents' area with their bedroom, bathroom, and home office.

The garden has been connected to the roof terrace by a set of terraces and outside stairs so that people can walk around the house while opening up beautiful views of the landscape. 

The reduction in terms of materials and the use of unfinished double-shell in-situ concrete walls not only has aesthetic value but also enabled the architect to dispense with some trades such as plastering or scaffolding.

To push the economy of the project even further, Studio Hertweck designed a single shaft in the center of the cube which contains all the networks of the house: from electric cables to water pipes, from the chimney flue to the laundry chute. 

All the technical appliances and sanitary equipment are arranged around this shaft so that they can be connected exclusively to it. The house is designed so that there are no thermal bridges and is heated by an air-water heat pump. 

Ground floor plan

First floor plan

Second floor plan

Third floor plan

Project facts

Client: private 

Conception and artistic supervision: Prof. Florian Hertweck, Architect, Luxembourg 

Structural Engineer: Stelio Berikaki, Sinzig 

Technical Supervision of the construction: Ira Matheis, Architect, Remagen 

Planning Phase: 2014-2015 

Construction Phase: 2016-2020 

Housing surface net: 182 m2 

Construction Type: Sandwich Concrete Walls 16/14/20, Concrete slabs, Timber/aluminum windows

All images © Bildpark / Veit Landwehr, Cologne 

> via Studio Hertweck