Following on from the successful creations presented by the designers in recent years – Constantin Grcic, Karim Rashid, Bouroullec brothers, Campana Brothers, Hella Jongerius and Patricia Urquiola – at imm cologne 2006 the german design council asked me to do one of the Ideal houses for the international furniture fair IMM cologne. Next to Stefan Diez and Astrid Krogh I made my interpretation of what would be my ideal house. The other house was done by the old master of technical minimalism Dieter Rams (Braun).

We ended up in a totally different setting than the years before which made it very difficult but also very interesting in my opinion. I tried do make an intervention that was not only about an ideal but also reacted on the actual situation, the surrounding, the fairground.

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My ideal house is an ongoing experiment, like a laboratory continuously under construction. It’s a space dealing not with the luxury of comfortable living but with the luxury of uncertainty and imagination. Birds do not occupy a total tree, likewise this house is about choosing not to have and not to make my house a fixed and closed entity. My surroundings are my house, my space is my tree and my house is my nest.

My house is without walls; a construction in which no design can hide behind its beautiful façade but has to show frankly what it is. The construction will sometimes ignore and sometimes emphasize the present architecture, it will sometimes be agreeable, sometimes scary, sometimes exciting like a steel industrial urban treehouse. In my view progression comes with many failures, like evolution. Without logic, imagination and the courage to experiment nothing exciting can happen.

My house and the surrounding context are intertwined in a symbiotic relationship in which none has more importance or power over the other. The system creates a condition that respects every part of the entire space, inside and outside, because every part can be useful eventually. From this open system will grow a climbing wall, like a bean stalk, going up as an alternative stairway. Like the climbing wall there will be more experimental alternatives for contemporary living. They are not fairy tales but honest solutions and proposals for the industry.

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