The local fim heltwerk architekten, headed by Henrike Elsner and Lucas Fernández-Trapa, has restored a house in Caan, a community of 700 inhabitants located between Frankfurt and Cologne, in the Westerwaldkreis district of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

In the old quarter of the German municipality there are still some farms from the late 19th century, with their houses and barns of volcanic stone. One of the houses was worked upon in a project that made sure to respect its original character, sticking to strict criteria for heritage preservation and using materials that impact on the environment minimally.

Following advanced technical standards with the aim of obtaining a passive construction, the volume that was inserted between the house and the barn in the 1950s has been replaced by a wooden piece of simple geometry, set slightly forward with respect to the preexisting structures. The old house contains the private rooms, and the wooden volume the shared spaces, including the kitchen.