Schwoerer Haus

Earlier this week, myself and some collaborators from Build Consutlants were invited to the factory of Schwoerer Haus, near Stuttgart, to see for ourselves how the flat pack houses they sell are made.  We have a few prospective sites where we could use the houses, which benefits include 30 year guarantee, lowering utilities to 20% of the original cost, and a crazy fast build time.  From paid deposit of 10%, it takes 12 weeks for your new house to be installed on site.  

Obviously this is a huge advantage for developers, and also for those looking for a more robust option other than the flimsy new-builds we see going up around the country.

5 weeks supply of Timber, all sorted by size by a giant sorting machine...  enough for 20 new houses.

The size of the factory blows you away, there is a shed the size of 2 football pitches, and the lumbar yard above.. all felled from nearby sustainable forests. The company produces all of it's building material on site from the wood (which is spruce) and incinerates any waste product in it's on-site power plant which produces enough electricity to power 60,000 homes. 

What astounded me about the product is that all but 2 of the 37,000 homes they have already built are unique.  With a seemingly infinite choice of finishes, they have a sampling centre where you can see all the materials you have, and pull together your mood board for your new home.  

Below are some of the show homes they had on site.  Gives you an idea of all the variations you can have.  Kind of blows any pre-conceptions about flat-packs out of the water.

Give me a bell if you want to find out more, a bit more information... too much to put in one post!  Hopefully we'll be seeing some of these in the UK soon...

www.schwoerer.de  

Berlin

I have finally made it to see Chipperfield's re-design of the Neues Museum in Berlin.  Beautiful detailing and conversations between different materials made the museum as much as a show-piece as the artefacts inside.

David Chipperfield - Neues Museum

In contrast, Chipperfield has been commissioned to renovate Berlin's Modern Art Museum, Neue Nationalgalerie, and had installed an art piece "Sticks and Stone's" in the galleries main space before the work commences in 2015.  I can't wait to see how he and his team tackle the Mies van der Rohe building.... possibly more challenging than the  Neues museum in terms of critics!

We checked out the exhibitions there, I hope the redesign helps the space, a little bit crowded for me! Just some detail snaps of art works below.

Berlin itself was lovely and autumnal, staying in the district of Kruzenberg, we checked out the riverside street market, great cafes and bars.  Very laid back there! We'll be back soon.