Unser S(ch)austall by FNP Architekten | Germany | 2007

Winner of a 2005 AR Award for Emerging Architecture, this showroom by Stuttgart-based FNP Architekten is a renovation of a pigsty, the humorous relationship between these two uses apparent in the project’s parenthetical naming (saustall=pigsty; schaustall=showroom).

To deal with the crumbling 18th-century structure, the architects created a “house within a house”, a wood container that fit within the old stone walls but without touching them.

A new roof protects old and new from the elements. The awards jury mentions that the existing windows now look fashionably random, even though they are derived from the building’s original function, a decidedly humorous take on the renovation. In the end, the project is more dignified than humorous, the architects able to extend the life of an old building through simple yet clever means.