Jakob Giese

In the 1920s and 1930s Hiddensee was home to the emergence of a great number of influential artists. These artists drew their inspiration from living in a refugium, a hideway, which the island as an isolated and enclosed site - detached from the busyness of everyday life - provided them with.

The economic development towards tourism as the main source of income brought a great change upon the island and its inhabitants, a previously self-sufficient fishing community, irreversibly destroying the island’s refugial character. The proposed architecture for a residence for stipendiaries picks up on the idea of this original, now lost place of retreat. Searching to go back to that origin the residence eventually finds its roots at a cliff on the very northern edge of the island, called “Toter Kerl” at Swantiberg.

Situated at a coastal borderline situation, the building presents itself at the clashing point of the open sea and the island. A place at which the natural landscape-moulding forces of wind and water are vividly confronting the face of the island’s high plains. The house becomes an element of fortification on its own within this fading landscape, thus emblematically recording and conserving the characteristics of its site.

The specific morphology and robustness of the structure does not interfere with the perpetual abrasion of the cliff line, which is slowly washing the monument out of the cliff, leaving it more and more transformed into an actually autonomous place, an obvious point of reference, a distinct island holding its own coordinates, a refugium.

The artists’ enclaves lie fully protected within this rough shell. Each one being an independent unit; providing a studio, accommodation and a private exterior space suavely dressed in local boulder clay. During the abrasion process the entrance of the house moves from the top of the cliff to the bottom of the building and eventually even down to sea level. Thus the change in landscape fully transforms the interior room sequence and the perception of it by the inhabitants and visitors.

The correlation of the two sites, the stipendiaries’ house and the island of Hiddensee grows stronger specifically due to the increasing distance between them. The scale of the building as well as the apparent impression of the cliff line on its exterior are figuratively preserving the island at this site for many generations to come.

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