As one of Germany’s most talented architects, Sigurd Larsen designs extraordinary houses and hotels. His design studio combines the aesthetics of high-quality materials with functionality and complex contexts. What is particularly important to him when designing is the interaction with daylight and the embedding of the building in a strong narrative.
You were born in Denmark, why did you choose Berlin as your adopted home?
Sigurd Larsen: I ended up here for pragmatic reasons. After studying in Copenhagen, I got my first job in Berlin. I was here often anyway and thought the city was great. And finally, every well-known Dane has lived in Berlin for some time, from Sören Kierkegaard to Hans Christian Andersen. If you travel south from Copenhagen, Berlin is the first big city, so I’m not far away. My parents live in Aarhus. Whether you visit my sister in Copenhagen or me in Berlin, there is hardly any difference in distance. I just had to get used to the different culture and language here.
What rules or values do you use to design your projects?
There is no predetermined format where I say it has to be one way or the other for it to be a project from our office. I go out of my way to avoid doing so. I’m much too curious and am always trying new things. But if we are talking about the fact that I come from Denmark, a focus of my projects is on daylight and in general the use of light, with materials of solid durability. I also attach great importance to high quality craftsmanship. Partly it has to do with my origins but I think a Japanese or a Swiss person can say the same about their homeland.
You recently completed the Lakehouse in West Berlin, what was the design idea?
The Lakehouse is a public facility for sport and exercise; you can also rent the house for seminars, events or exhibitions. It’s a great place by a lake on the border with Brandenburg. It consists of several small areas so that events can take place at the same time. It also gives you a scale that feels more like a big house with a kitchen than an airport lobby, and that was the intention. Of course there is also the interaction with daylight: on one side of the building the sun shines through a forest in the morning – incredibly beautiful light. Throughout the day it moves around the building, which is fanned out in all directions towards the lake. And there is a beautifully framed sunset. It is a beautiful experience when the sun is low, the sun shines through the treetops and reflects in the lake. That’s why we installed these large windows to catch the beautifully filtered light. In addition, the house was built by a Swiss company from exceptionally prefabricated wooden elements; it was supposed to be state of the art with integrated power cables.
Lakehouse, Berlin
Exciting! Your own house in Greece looks completely different.
Yes, it’s called Piperi, which means pepper in Greek – the name comes from the small island on which the house stands. I totally fell in love with the property and the views of this uninhabited island. The house faces east towards the sunrise, on the other side you can enjoy the sunset, which is beautiful. However, there was a strict development plan there, one of the strictest in Europe. Piperi is a very well preserved island with very few tourists. All the houses are white cubes with white stairs and that’s how I wanted to design my house, even though I was forced to do so due to the local building culture. There are also rules about proportions, windows and all sorts of things. We wanted to build a house that had the same exciting, almost labyrinthine feeling as the small Greek villages with their countless stairs. It was extremely interesting to deal with the building culture and local crafts.
Piperi, Greece
And what was the challenge with the Glass House in Uckermark?
The Glass House is a weekend house for a family from Berlin, which is also rented out. The idea was that you come from Berlin, walk through the door and suddenly you’re in this other quiet world and look at the landscape. We wanted to create added value with the attic, realised that the view up there is extremely beautiful and that’s how the idea of the transparent roof came about. Instead of bricks we used glass, otherwise it is a typical wooden roof construction. Our photographers came back one day with incredible pictures of the sunset that made the whole house look like Ayers Rock in Australia, from yellow to red to purple. To be honest, we weren’t really aware of the effect when we built it and it turned out much better than we thought.
Glass House, Uckermark
How do you think we will live in the future, what will change?
The last small living revolution occurred during the pandemic, when suddenly everyone at home was equipped with a home office. Previously there was a lot of talk about offices being more homely and suddenly there was actually a movement towards home. But how we build our houses is also important: we see among the younger generations a desire to build significantly smaller houses today, with less material. This must be made possible so that they can be approved.
You also design hotels, currently one in Crete. What makes a successful hotel for you?
A really good hotel always has to have a theme. This doesn’t have to be big. At the Michelberger Hotel in the Spreewald, for example, the theme is gastronomy and all of the building’s materials were – similar to food – lifted from the earth, baked, fired or oiled. You can feel the connection between gastronomy and architecture and you can look after yourself in the large garden next door. The guests sleep under the roof, are directly connected to the large common room in the morning and you can smell breakfast being prepared there. You live in the middle of it all and can see the garden all the time, where you can taste, smell and touch everything. This is a clear theme for a hotel and it works wonderfully.
Photos Copyrights: Tobias Koenig, Michael Romstoeck
