House R 128 is a modernist single-family

house A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, built in 1999/2000 by

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Werner Sobek. The house features a

modular Broadly speaking, modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a sy ...

and recyclable design, is completely glazed and has no interior dividing walls. It is computerized and meets its own energy requirements completely.

Overview

The name of the house is derived from its location at Römerstrasse 128, which is a small and steep piece of land at the edge of the

vale A vale is a type of valley. Vale may also refer to: Places Georgia * Vale, Georgia, a town in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region Norway * Våle, a historic municipality Portugal * Vale (Santa Maria da Feira), a former civil parish in the municipali ...

. When the house was built, it was paid a great amount of attention in the architectural world. The building is shaped like a

cube In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. Viewed from a corner it is a hexagon and its net is usually depicted as a cross. The cube is the only r ...

, has four levels and is wrapped by a glass shield. All components can be segregated for recycling. There are no walls or closed rooms (apart from the bathrooms) and only few pieces of

furniture Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Fu ...

. The transparency is supposed to create the impression that one lives outdoors exposed to

nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

. Owing to its passive solar architecture with triple-glazed walls, the house needs no energy for heating. Seasonal temperature shifts are balanced by a seasonal thermal energy store.

Electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...

is generated by

solar cell A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon.

s. Every item in the house is computer-controlled.

Overview

References

Further reading