MICOL'S STORY

A letter
from the owner

To everyone entering Bau Lütz,

Bau Lütz began, above all, with a question: how can we build places in which people can live better?

It is a question that has accompanied me for a long time and that grows broader each time I try to pursue it fully.

A home must protect us from heat, cold, wind and noise. It must let us breathe well, provide light when needed and shade when we need it. There are the materials we touch, the surfaces we see every day, the garden outside the window, water, trees and the landscape.

Then there are things that are harder to measure, yet which we recognise immediately when we enter a place.

A well-judged proportion. A room in which we feel at ease. Light falling in a particular way. The colour of a wall. A staircase that invites us upward. A window that opens the view. A door that truly marks the passage from one space to another. A shared place where it feels natural to pause and meet someone.

This, too, is where my way of thinking about Bau Lütz begins.

For me, a building lives through the relationships it can create: between those who inhabit it and the space, between matter and light, between the interior and what lies outside, between climate and construction, between what we find and what we decide to transform. Technology is part of this relationship as well. So are the landscape, the neighbourhood, the people who will live nearby, and time.

That is why, when we speak about energy efficiency, building systems, materials, engineering or new technologies, the question that matters to me always comes next: what will truly change in the life of those who use this building?

Building also means thinking about time.

A home does not end on the day the keys are handed over. It will continue to live through increasingly hot summers, winters, rain, changing families and new ways of working and living. It may pass from one generation to the next. It will need maintenance, may sometimes need to change, and perhaps welcome people whose needs differ from those for whom it was first conceived.

I like the idea that a building can age well. That materials are chosen with thought for what they will become. That a space can remain useful and pleasant without continually being erased and remade.

And then there is beauty.

For me, it has a precise place in building. It has to do with balance, care and the quality we perceive even when we cannot name it. I believe that the spaces in which we spend our lives influence us far more than we ordinarily imagine.

That is also why I am interested in architecture's relationship with art.

A garden can be conceived with the same attention as a room. Light can become part of the composition. A worked stone, a piece of timber, a surface, a colour or an object designed specifically for a space can alter the character of the whole. Sometimes the smallest detail is what remains in the memory.

I do not believe every building must tell everything or continually draw attention to itself. I also like things that reveal themselves slowly as we inhabit a place.

Bau Lütz is also a place where we want to keep learning.

We study what was done before us, what has withstood time and what, by contrast, has revealed its limits. We observe what architects, engineers, craftspeople and researchers are experimenting with today. We are interested in architectural history, construction techniques, materials, climate, landscape, ways of living and, naturally, art.

Every project, however, begins anew.

One site is not another. A house by a lake does not ask the same questions as a building in a city centre. An existing villa carries a history that a new building does not yet have. People differ too. This is what makes our work so interesting and, at the same time, so demanding.

This website also grew from a desire to share something of this journey.

It will present our projects and publications, but over time we also want to share some of the research that accompanies us. I would like visitors to arrive here with a home to build or a building to transform and perhaps leave the website with an additional curiosity about architecture, materials, climate or the way a space can affect our lives.

Bau Lütz, in its current form, is a young practice. I prefer to say so plainly.

The people who make it up bring experience, professions, studies and work developed long before the company was founded. We are now seeking to relate these skills and, project by project, turn them into a way of working that will be recognisable through what we build.

In the end, our work will have to earn us credibility.

I hope that many years from now we will be able to look at the buildings created by Bau Lütz and recognise in each something of the place where it was born, the people for whom it was conceived and the time it has passed through.

I would also like them to be beautiful buildings.

Places in which people feel at ease.

Places where technology does its job without intruding on life.

Places that consume resources intelligently, protect people from the climate, are built with care and retain their dignity over time.

If you have reached this page, perhaps you are thinking about a home, a plot of land, a building to restore, or a place in which to work, learn, care or live together.

Or perhaps you simply wanted to understand a little more about the people behind Bau Lütz.

Either way, I am glad that you have come this far.

For me, building means, first and foremost, caring for a place and for the people who will inhabit it.