Tecta Factory and Hexenhaus

Beginning in the mid 1980s, Tecta factory owner Axel Bruchhäuser commissioned Alison and Peter Smithson to design a series of additions and alterations to both his factory and his house. When he died in 2003, Peter Smithson was still working on the museum for Bruchhäuser’s furniture collection.

At the heart of the interventions is a wish to connect the buildings more intimately, more directly, with their contrasting landscapes - the meadow and courtyard of the Tecta factory, and the wooded slopes of the Bad Karlshafen house, the Hexenhaus. On both sites, the project includes numerous additions and subtractions to the existing buildings, such as porches, openings in walls, floors and roofs, garden pavilions and bridges.

The work proceeded speculatively, without a final vision for either the factory or the house. The result is a gradual transformation of the buildings and their relation to the landscape, not just a series of pragmatic additions. The phrase that both Smithson and Bruchhauser used to describe this ongoing process was ‘step-by-step’. ‘All the changes are initiated by Axel’ says Smithson. ‘They all stem from a problem he has identified, or an observation he has made.’