In 1995, u r 12, Total isoliertes Gästezimmer (Completely Insulated Guest Room) was built on the ground floor of Haus u r. As partly revealed by its title, Total isoliertes Gästezimmer is the first room Schneider created for another person, namely, a guest, a lodger. Similar to Schlafzimmer’s bedding, the guest room consists of a mattress with a black sheet and a light blue wool blanket folded on top of it. In the back of the rather narrow, claustrophobic room are a portable electric heater and a white woden stool. On the wall next to them is a slow opening covered with a removable metal grille, revealing a section of the insulating material behind it and the emergency exit – the escape route – out of this confined space. With the construction of the guest room the house adjusts to receiving guests and lodgers (in addition to visitors), its function becoming comparable with that of a motel or hostel. But more than a scenario of a motel, the construction of a guest room equipped with an emergency exit leading to a completely insulated setting which severs oneself from the world, suggests a site of occasional anonymous sex, or even an architectural scheme for imprisonment or sexual crimes. In an oft-quoted interview from 1996 Schneider introduced yet another scenario for the guest room:’now I’ve got a guest room. Maybe some others might like to fester away there instead of me.’ When considering this statement confessing to his festering in the guest room, it is suddenly plausible to suggest that Schneider is in fact the guest, his own private guest and also the host. Schneider’s and Haus u r’s shifts between various functions, roles, and scenarios equate his unstable identity with the instability of the house’s identity. - Ory Dessau