The “House with two courtyards” is an introverted concrete dwelling in the Bavarian Forest that organizes domestic life around two internal courts. The larger court serves the public rooms, while a smaller, sheltered court addresses private spaces. A single, deliberate opening from a separate fireplace room frames the distant mountains, giving the house a precise yet restrained dialogue with the broader landscape.
House with two courtyards Technical Information
- Architects1-4: BÜRO MÜHLBAUER
- Location: Bad Kötzting, Germany
- Area: 99 m2 | 1,071 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2018 – 2025
- Photographs: © Mikael Olsson
The House with two courtyards develops its meaning alone from within itself, without external references, and can only be fully understood upon entering. Two inner courtyards illuminate the house: the public rooms face the large courtyard, while the private rooms face the small one. This spatial concept allows the interior and exterior spaces to develop their own unique effect and meaning. The house is completely cast in concrete.
– Alexander Mühlbauer
House with two courtyards Photographs
Introverted Siting and Selective Outlook
Set within the Bavarian Forest yet described by its authors as built without context, the house adopts a self-contained posture that prioritizes interior life over external engagement. The perimeter reads as a continuous, opaque edge that withholds views and reorients attention toward the courts. This inversion converts the site condition into calibrated sky rooms where light, shade, and temperature are negotiated at close range rather than through expansive openings to the surroundings.
Against this reticence, a single aperture from the fireplace room addresses the distant mountain horizon. The move is less panoramic than instrumental: a narrow, directional view that aligns interior ritual with a specific topographic datum. The contrast between the closed perimeter and this one outward glance clarifies the building’s disciplinary stance, placing spatial precision and control of outlook over a general responsiveness to context.
Courtyard Typology and Domestic Hierarchy
The plan divides the program by court. Public rooms open to a larger courtyard that accommodates collective use and seasonal changes, while bedrooms and intimate spaces turn to a smaller, more protected court. The result is a clear gradient of privacy, with each side of the house reading the sky differently and receiving distinct light and air. The courts act as environmental lungs, modulating wind, storing cool air at night, and admitting low winter sun deep into the plan.
Circulation acknowledges weather as an architectural actor. The fireplace room is accessed through the larger court, turning movement into a sequence that crosses thresholds of temperature, brightness, and sound. From within, the courts establish layered sightlines across rooms, alternating exposure and enclosure. They function as organizing voids that stabilize the plan, stage moments of pause, and permit interior vistas without compromising privacy.
Monolithic Concrete and Spatial Atmosphere
The house is entirely cast in concrete, creating structural continuity across walls, slabs, and enclosures. This monolithic strategy concentrates expression in proportion, depth, and mass rather than in additive detail. Openings are few and deeply set, producing thick reveals that temper daylight and emphasize the weight of the envelope. The material’s thermal capacity supports the courtyard microclimates, storing heat by day and releasing it as temperatures fall.
Concrete surfaces register subtle shifts of light and weather, from raking sun to diffuse overcast. The resulting interior is austere yet legible, with shadows articulating edges and volumes more distinctly than ornament could. Rain and frost leave trace effects on exterior faces, so the building reads time as patina. Inside, the uniform finish amplifies sound absorption at scale, while the courts provide acoustic relief that keeps the rooms calm despite their hard surfaces.
Gardens as Images and Instruments of Perception
The project consolidates three gardens, two conceived as non-occupiable images. These are not amenities for strolling but framed compositions that concentrate sky, foliage, and ground into legible figures. By withholding access, the gardens become optical and temporal devices, staging the passage of clouds, the angle of the sun, and the accumulation of snow as primary content for daily life.
Landscape here is treated as a cultural medium. Architectural mass and void are tuned to perception rather than recreation, aligning with Prof. Maurus Schifferli’s articulation of visible appearance as a means to strip away distraction and focus on essential conditions. In this reading, the house positions habitation as a sustained act of looking, where time, weather, and distance are measured by the courts and a single horizon view rather than by outward stylistic display.
House with two courtyards Plans
House with two courtyards Image Gallery
About BÜRO MÜHLBAUER
BÜRO MÜHLBAUER is an architecture firm based in Ingolstadt, Germany. The firm is led by Alexander, Andreas, and Andreas Josef Mühlbauer.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Collaborators: Alexander Mühlbauer, Andreas Mühlbauer, Andreas Josef Mühlbauer, Lukas Westner
- Landscape Architect: Prof. Maurus Schifferli, Bern (CHE)
- Artist: Hans Sailer, Kirchdorf am Inn (DEU)
- Photographs: Mikael Olsson, Goettingen (SWE)
