“I MUST HAVE A WALL BEHIND ME” - MIES
BERLIN, GERMANY
2022





This project considers the courtyard formed by the L-shaped plan of Haus Lemke as its subject. In a dialectical relation with the glazed facades of the house, the two walls start to gain their own identity as a formal and visual marker at the end of the court.

With its extremely thin faux marble edge reveal the walls act as an image for the house. The wood backing reveals the construction logic of the wall. Glass from the electronic waste is recycled to produce these sustainable tiles which by virtue of their iron oxide content reveal a green pattern mimicking the ornamental marble patterns of the Barcelona pavilion.

In the Haus Lemke foyer, the extension first appears. It aids in setting up distinctly the fourth quadrant of the house. The foyer understood as inducing a pinwheel due to its surrounding asymmetrical partitions, now becomes the only space inside the house that perceives this quadrant. In so doing, it stabilizes the space of arrival by providing an enclosure to this quote unquote missing wing of the pinwheel. The walls conceptually finish the courtyard space and in doing so strip the reading of the house as this autonomous object - the house now put into the larger matrix in relation with the garden, starts to question itself in relation to nature. With the addition of the wall and the subtraction of the Foerster paving paths, the court and the garden come again into the dialogue with the house, completing the conceptual schema that Mies had proposed.