The red steel "T"

Photographing the T-House was spiritual, one of the strongest architectural experiences ever. We started taking pictures as soon as the foundations were in the ground, and we documented the assembly and erection process and of course the finished house. CorTen steel was used for the outer surfaces and it turned from bright orange to a very elegant dark color, almost black with a hint of bordeaux red.

Eduard Hueber, architect and photographer of architecture, shares with us his memories of the day he saw arrive the flat-bed trucks that transported the shell of the T-House, wich had been prefabricated in six parts at a local factory. It was extremely important that the dimensions of the pieces were exact, and that the corners were perfectly angled. The cranes placed the pieces carefully on top of a concrete foundation, and finally everything was welded and polished.

The architects were Simon Ungers and Tom Kinslow. Hueber had met Ungers while both were teaching architectural design at Syracuse University in Upstate New York. In 1992, while the house was being built, the two architects lived separated by a couple of blocks in TriBeCa. Their friendship continued even when Ungers moved back to his native Germany in 2000. His health deteriorated and he passed away six years later. Aside from his architectural practice, Ungers was also a sculptor: he left a number of minimalist pieces of art, which dialogue with architecture through their form and concepts.

In fact, the T-House could be considered a huge steel sculpture (in the best sense of the word). It is not clear wether it is a house with a great library or a library with some domestic programme attached. In any case, it is the product of the commission of an aspiring writer, who needed a place for his books and a residence among the trees, in this 40-acre property.

Therefore, it was essential  to integrate the bookshelves with the views of the landscape. Ungers solved it by elevating the volume of the library in a 6 metre cantilever, virtually turning it into a viewpoint,  and creating a double-storey space inside that separates the working and reading area from the shelving. The shelving system is an independent steel structure, including a wrap-around mezzanine, suspended from the ceiling, creating a column-free working space. This is probably the most spectacular space of the house.

We can simplify the geometry as two prisms displayed perpendicularly one on top of the other, in a T-shaped plan. In order to access the house, one has to walk the longest side of the "T", on top of the residential volume (the plot is inclined to the south). The entrance is where the two pieces intersect. Here we have two options: to go in and up to the library, or down to the residential area, which consists of one space with individual areas (dining, living, sleeping) defined by core elements (kitchen, chimney, bathroom) which are independent of the enclosure.

We may also choose to stay outside, admiring the nature around the house on the wooden deck, which is very reminiscent of that of a boat. In fact, the construction of the skin of the house is also similar to the hull of a ship. The interior is a wood frame with ¾ inch plywood veneer panels. Because of the different expansion rates of wood and steel, the wood frame is structurallly independent from the steel frame.

As the shell requires no expansion joints, a homogeneous surface is achieved, contributing to the monolithic appearance of the building. It needs no maintainance, as it was probably part of the plan that the exterior skin would acquire a dark patina, and that grasses and ferns would grow wildly around the base. The truth is that there is something poetically obscure and primitive in the way the monolith meets the ground. Some express it as if the house had emerged from the bowels of the earth, or as if it had always existed in this spot.

This rather grave or solemn climax described by the visitors to the T-House is common to all of Ungers’ work, even the art installations. Our impression is that we are facing an architecture that is somewhat imbued with the figure of the architect: the personality, dreams, and also the reflections and fears of Ungers. His career ended prematurely, but he left very inspiring work that we should take a look at every now and then.