Mean people claim that Schleswig-Holstein is just as exciting as their first impression: the landscape as flat as a badly ironed item of clothing, the Baltic Sea as dull as a child’s paddling pool. And isn’t the most important modernist building a cowshed: the striking Gut Garkau by Hugo Häring from the 1920s?!
If you go up an inconspicuous driveway in the small village of Kopperby to an old farm with a centuries-old beech tree, you will find behind it a shed for the sheep and a small, elevated house for the guests: Ferienhaus Hof Ahmen (Photo: Simon Schmalhorst).
The beds are two alcoves, in between a long shelf with a shower on one side and the kitchen on the other. And for the outer shell, nothing but glass. All this a clever, tongue-in-cheek, casual nod by the young architect Malte Sunder-Plassmann to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Farnsworth House. A shed for the visitors, next to the one for the sheep. You have to be brave to do that.
And Ludwig Mies van der Rohe? He would have loved the house at first glance, he would have sat down with suave panache, opposite the gawping sheep, blowing his cigar smoke into the wide expanse of the sky, grinning broadly with sheer happiness. Because that’s what they can do here in Schleswig-Holstein. Build sheds. But you should see the sheds!
– Kathrin Schmuck has been working as a book designer with HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE since 2016. www.bucharchitektur.de
PS: You can find the house, along with many other recommendations, in our current publication Places & Visions, designed by Bucharchitektur \ Kathrin Schmuck
Much of HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE’s work involves dealing with visual material. Sometimes there is a picture that particularly appeals to us – a photo that surprises us, fascinates us, or simply forces us to pay even more attention to a house or look at it from a different perspective. You can find this in our series “One Picture”.
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