Architect Takes Us Behind the Scenes of a Fantastic Modern German Home

What an incredible house! Surrounded by an entire town of medieval buildings, this spectacularly modern home somehow still manages to blend in with the surroundings. One of the architects, Gaby Storkmann, is here to show me around. What a space! That is a really brave piece of design, actually. And the windows are incredible! There are 64 in total, and they allow the light to enter the house from everywhere. Permission to knock down the crumbling medieval house sent it on the architect's agreement to replace it with a structure matching it exactly in size, angles, footprint and height. It needed to be a carbon copy in every dimension. And what on earth is this massive piece of rock doing in here? That's astonishing! Gaby has put a 42-ton sandstone slab in the middle of the living space. You might wonder how it got inside here. It didn't come through the front door. No. So it came first, before the house came. No. So there was the foundations, then the stone, and then the house built around it. On the top floor of the house is the lounge area. Now that is impressive! Which is so light, it almost feels like we're outdoors. You've got so many windows on the walls, on the roof, everywhere, that it's constantly framing tiny little mini pictures. Exactly. Of this lovely historic landscape. You got it! And the clever design surprises continue on the middle floor, which houses the master bedroom. Here's the bedroom. Very long, narrow space, isn't it? Right. This house has just one door, and that's the front door. To that end, the en suite loo is completely up and planned. How do you flush it? Step right in the corner. What, there? Yes. There's no button there, though. Hang on. Step on it. And that's not the only trick the house has to offer. A very smart bedroom. Three lovely windows. Just wait a minute. Let me get here. Whoa, the floor moves. The whole floor and the walls. I'm moving out from the rest of the house. Under the confines of the planning agreement, the only option for expanding the footprint of the house and having outdoor space was to come up with this ingenious retracting bedroom wall. A real feat of German engineering. I can't believe it. When you've got a small house sitting on a building plot with not very much outside space, what better way to make that house bigger than just extend the floor plate out? It's genius. Yeah.