Réparer la Villa Kutter

Description

Villa Kutter, a house commissioned by the artist Joseph Kutter in 1929 from the young architect Hubert Schumacher, was the first modernist house in Luxembourg. It has undergone several architectural alterations. The most destructive took place in 1942, when its flat roof was replaced with a pitched roof and the vertical slits in the stairwell façade were replaced with arched windows. This intervention completely disfigured the modern architecture and rendered the villa unrecognisable. The brief given to us was to transform this single-family home with an artist’s studio into a contemporary house with at least two artist’s studios and the capacity to accommodate children and grandchildren.

STATEMENT OF THE JURY
Impressed by the scope of the historical research and the outstanding quality of the Villa Kutter project, the jury decided to confer a Special Award in recognition of an exemplary approach bringing together both a built project and its accompanying publication.

"The architect researched the history of this first modernist building in Luxembourg and convinced the client to transform it back to the original state. Her art was to make it possible to live comfortably inside a monument which she did in a wonderful way that makes every architect jealous. In the same thorough way, she wrote the book about the historic research, telling the way of how this villa was brought back to life."