How can we breathe new possibilities into modern architecture?” was the question the German architect duo Gabriela Seifert and Götz Stöckmann of Formalhaut posed when designing their new home. Rallying the help of six artists and a poet, they struck pay dirt, creating an interdisciplinary solution to stand in the footprint of a crumbling 300-year-old cottage affectionately called “the Little Lemon House.”

Located in a historic district of Gelnhausen, outside Frankfurt, the Living Room, as the new house is dubbed, rethinks the roles of private and public life, while injecting ornamental and natural elements into modern architecture. Clad with a powder-coated-aluminum skin, the house is perforated by 52 windows set in a checkerboard pattern. Peering through one of the windows you are greeted by a rocky ground-floor landscape, as if the house has grown up around a giant quarry stone nestled in gravel. Suspended in space over the living area, the bedroom hangs in a sliding drawer that can be opened over the street for alfresco sleeping. In each instance the interior elements escape their traditional boundaries as the house playfully thumbs its nose at convention.

A sound installation by artist Achim Wollscheid elegantly resonates the conceptual spirit of the project. Noises from outside can be electronically manipulated and transferred indoors—think of traffic sounds becoming John Cage–esque ambient noise. The reverse is also possible, with external speakers projecting sounds of daily life outside. Life becomes art becomes sonic architecture, and even nightly dishwashing rituals are elevated to performance.

As Seifert explains, the house responds to the exterior environment in a way that’s akin to breathing. Every cloud that scoots across the sky is felt as its shadow changes the light and mood inside the house. Like a cell wall that allows only certain information to pass through, the Living Room rethinks the glass house, shaping how the outside is felt inside, and the inside out.