In Germany, single-family houses and semi-detached houses may be built if they have been classified as eligible for approval by the building authorities after viewing the building sketches.
There are no fixed design requirements through the building law.
The building code only stipulates that a house must not be “defaced”.
This vague formulation leaves a lot of leeway.
And that is used: Some give their garage entrance pillars with a marble look and wrought-iron tendrils, as if the dictator's palace and wine bar were lifting one together.
The other frames his garden gate with a wall in the ruin look.
This is as symbolic as a skull and has a long tradition, both in baroque painting and in 19th century garden design.
But in front of a rather mundane post-war house, a vanitas allegory seems somehow quirky.
This is what it looks like where and when homeowners in Germany fulfill their dreams.
And one of them looked very closely.
For 20 years the building historian Turit Fröbe has discovered strange, nasty, dizzying and, as she says, “fascinating” houses and details throughout Germany and in Switzerland and Austria.
Her book “The Art of Building Sin” became a bestseller.
Now her new work appears: “Eigenwillige Eigenheime”, a fascinating compendium of the aberrations of taste.