Villa at Seminarstrasse 18

About the building

On lower Seminarstrasse in Kirchenfeld stands a house that catches the eye from afar with its half-timbering. It was built in 1905. Architect and client were the same man: E. Senften-Brönnimann, who appears in the city's building inventory both as an architect from Bern and as the client from Adelboden.

The basic form is a cubic rendered building under a quarter-hipped roof. Two gabled projections placed diagonally opposite each other and a corner bay facing lower Seminarstrasse strongly break up the cube. As a result the building looks different from every side. The upper and attic floors are articulated with lively decorative half-timbering. The pattern is laid out in three zones and shows St Andrew's crosses, circles, semicircles and loops.

The two projections carry steep, kinked saddle roofs with hipped ends. Their gables are clad with pointed-arch boards cut with saw-tooth ornaments typical of the period. Finials on the ridges punctuate the roofscape. At the south corner sits a half-timbered bay on a bulbous stone base, crowned by a square pointed spire – the finest detail to look at from the street.

The heritage office sees the house as a model example of the picturesque, romantic strand of architecture around 1900, which nonetheless uses its architectural parts and ornament with great discipline. The original fence with Art Nouveau posts also survives. Later changes were a garage extension with new windows in 1958 and a double window on the west side of the ground floor in 1992. The house is rated worthy of protection and belongs to the Kirchenfeld building group; its garden is also considered of heritage interest.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Seminarstrasse 18 · Wikipedia (de): Liste der Kulturgüter in Bern/Kirchenfeld-Schosshalde (Nord) – Eintrag Seminarstrasse 18 · Wikidata: Q138820042