Ökonomiebau

Shelter for an agricultural vehicle in Brandenburg’s countryside.

The Ökonomiebau provides a small shelter for an agricultural vehicle in the urban hinterland of Berlin. This very unusual request offered the possibility to design a building with an extremely low budget, whose goal consists only in protecting its content from the rain.

The construction is thus reduced to the necessary and succeeds in being a simple but not shallow solution. The basic structure traces the minimalistic image of the archetypical volume, while industrial wooden slats overlap each other and create the outer layer and the impermeability of the construction. Over time, due to rain and sunlight the exterior skin will lose its warm colour and will therefore create a contrast to its unchanged interior.

The result appears at the same time incredibly clear and strangely ambiguous. The construction seems to balance between an obvious fragility and an elusive massiveness, showing without any secret the ephemeral character of its building principles but giving by its language a striking presence and unspeakable impression of permanence.

Jan Rösler Architekten
General contractor: Jan Rösler Bau