Berlin-based Studio Baumhauer renovated a traditional farmhouse in the Swiss village of Florins, inserting a wooden structure with new rooms in place of the existing barn. The architects focused on expanding the existing rooms so that they formed a unity with the historic substance. For the new facades, rough-sawn, untreated larch wood was chosen to refer to the traditional structures of the region (Fig. 4). The "Stiftung Ferien im Baudenkmal" is a project of tourism and monument preservation. It takes over architectural monuments exposed to decay and threatened with demolition, restores them gently, and gives them a new future as holiday properties. We show three examples from different eras. The Sunflower House with its Art Nouveau interior in Arbon was the home of the Swiss decorative painter and photographer Max Burkhardt. Built to his own design between 1904 and 1910, it is a total work of art in its unity of architecture, interior design, and artistry (Fig. 2). In Biel stands the flat house built in 1933 by the architects Hans Wildbolz and Max Rikli — a good, straight-lined representative of moderate modernism. It is located in a strongly heterogeneous residential quarter with a beautiful view (Fig. 1). The original building of the picturesque Bergwalder-Gitsch Hüs in Grengiols with its elaborate facade paintings, dates back to 1592. Gently modernized, elements such as the old beams, worn floors, fireplaces, and guild stone stoves still bear witness today to the long history of the building monument (Fig. 3). (Credits Ralph Feiner | Holidays in an architectural monument)
