The building, built in 1902 as a Gründerzeit country house with aviary and orangery is located in a residential area in the Berlin district of Grunewald and is protected according to the Berlin roll of monuments and historic buildings.

The owners wanted to live in their own house after moving back to Berlin, but in the house with 12 residential units only the garden-side mezzanine was free, as an area clearly insufficient for the family of 4. Therefore, additional living space was to be created in an area that had previously been used only temporarily and with subordinate functions.

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The reconstruction is taken as an opportunity to remove over-formations, to restore the face of the house and to integrate the formerly ill-fitting facade of the extension made in the 70s into the property.

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After gutting the building – while preserving its essential components – the task is to design and organise the merging of two previously separate apartments in the basement floor and the Beletage with a total of approx. 180 sqm of living space in such a way that the resulting unit is both perfectly connected to the garden and coherent in itself.

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First, some makeshift additions (conservatory, open staircase and balcony extension) are eliminated and the facade – supplemented in the 1970s by a not-so-charming, purpose-built extension -– is cleaned up and reorganised. Typical of the building period, the existing structure included a high-ceilinged basement with basement functions and no direct garden access at all, neither from the basement nor the Beletage.

Some structural measures to be mentioned are the addition of brick to the existing base, numerous adjustments such as patching the plaster, clinker, etc., as well as the drainage of the entire basement and a wide gravel edge.

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Essential to this is the constructionally complex lowering of the basement floor by underpinning, in sections also by re-foundation, in order to enable a high-quality living climate here with the newly gained room height of 2.80m and a modern floor structure with insulation and underfloor heating. Equally important is the opening of the facade with larger cutouts, achieved in the area of the brick base by installing new windows with steel profiles, in the area of the Beletage by revision of historic windows and addition of new wooden windows.

The garden floor/basement is upgraded with greater room heights, light design, and egress to the outdoors; in the Beletage, areas of parquet flooring become continuous.

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The bathrooms are relocated and a new kitchen is installed, as well as a custom-made new interior staircase as an essential part of the house – easy and good to walk, with self-acting lighting. On the ground floor, bathroom and children's room, as well as in the living area, the house opens to the outside world through floor-to-ceiling windows, which are a combination of reworked existing elements and modern steel elements.