Behrsche Villa: a special treasure takes on new lustre

It was once the home of Saxony Finance Minister August von Behr. But over the past 30 years, the glamorous villa built in 1827 had crumbled into an uninhabitable ruin. The architectural firm TSSB took on the venerable building in 2019 and began an extremely costly project to bring the structure back to life. Water and fire damage complicated the renovation work along with dry rot that filled the building’s decayed walls. The structure underwent gut renovation, a process in which the architects did their best to preserve as much of the old structure as possible.

Sandstone and brick walls, original slate elements and the exposed principal moulding serve as reminders of the building’s animated history while also producing fascinating contrasts to modern materials like lightweight concrete ceilings and chic black tiles in the bathrooms. Today, the villa is used as a representative office building situated in the best location of Dresden and serves as the home of the Dresden office TSSB, among other companies.

The architects considered only the very best materials when they outfitted the villa, a commitment that also extended to the building’s extravagant flooring used in the building. All of the roomy offices, which make up a total of 500 square metres of space, are outfitted with the elegant HARO two-layer parquet PRESTIGE. To pay homage to the historic importance of the building, the strip was laid in the classic herringbone pattern. It was a job in which the Dresden-based HARO partner Heinrich Schmied could show of his broad floor-laying know-how. The HARO parquet laid in this manner fits perfectly into the stylish mix of materials that the architects used to pull off the feat of transporting the history of the building into the present.