Behrens House Architectural Model

This architectural object is inspired by the Behrens House on the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt — Peter Behrens's own home, completed in 1901, and the first building he ever designed. It was conceived as a Gesamtkunstwerk: a total work of art in which architecture, interiors, furniture, and objects were unified under a single creative vision. The Mathildenhöhe has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2021.

This model captures the front façade from the entrance to the apex of the roof — the building's complete compositional argument in a single elevation.

Read the full Behrens House architecture guide

 

The front façade, distilled into form

 

The Behrens House front façade is defined by the contrast and interplay of its materials: iron clinker bricks set against pale plain plaster render, composed with the care of a decorative arts programme rather than conventional masonry. Above, the curved gable rises to a rounded profile that gives the house its distinctive near-ecclesiastical silhouette.

At the base, the entrance is the building's most elaborated moment — set deep within a stepped clinker brick frame and adorned with stylised eagle-wing ornamentation.

This façade model captures the elements that define the elevation:

• the stepped entrance recess with its ornamental clinker frame, set deep into the wall
• the material contrast of clinker, glazed brick, and plain render across the façade
• the curved gable rising to the apex, giving the composition its vertical resolution

Reduced to object form, the front façade reads as an argument about the relationship between architecture and craft — every material and every detail considered as part of a single whole.

 

Why the Behrens House works as an architectural model

 

The front façade translates well into object form because its character comes from material contrast, compositional proportion, and the depth of the entrance recess rather than from surface decoration at a scale that is lost in reduction. The stepped entrance frame, the texture of the clinker brickwork, and the upward movement of the curved gable are all qualities that survive — and in some respects clarify — at model scale.

The Behrens House is also an object with an unusually rich historical resonance. It is where Peter Behrens — the man who trained Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier simultaneously — first worked out his ideas about architecture as total design. In that sense it is the origin point of a great deal of what followed in twentieth-century architecture, and the model carries that weight.

 

Craft, materials, and finish

 

Each Behrens House model is cast in fine plaster and finished by hand in our studio in West Sussex. The finish allows light and shadow to articulate the stepped entrance frame and the textural contrast between the building's different surfaces in a way that echoes the material richness of the original building.

The model can be displayed on a shelf or desk, or mounted on the wall.

Product details

 

• Subject: Behrens House, Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt, Germany — front façade
• Architect: Peter Behrens
• Completed: 1901
• Architectural style: Jugendstil / early Modernism; Gesamtkunstwerk
• UNESCO World Heritage Site: 2021 (as part of Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt)
• Designed and made by: Chisel & Mouse

Learn more about the Behrens House

 

For a detailed exploration of the building's architecture, the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, and Behrens's place at the origin of modern architecture, see our in-depth guide:

Behrens House Architecture: Peter Behrens and the Total Work of Art