Hasta La Ideas

The asymmetric timber roof of this distillery by architects Hammerschmid, Pachl, Seebacher rises up amongst the trees of a valley in Upper Austria.

The distillery’s entire exterior is clad with nothing but roughly sawn, untreated timber, which was milled locally.

The four-storey building nestles against the steep hillside and has its entrance on the second storey.

A bar is located on the top floor and leads out onto a secluded terrace.

We’ve never featured a distillery on Dezeen before, but we have featured a few wineries – see them all here.

Photography is by Dietmar Hammerschmid.

Here’s a few more words from the architects:

The building is situated in the north of Austria, in the middle of an isolated narrow valley.

The Shape of the ground plan is influenced by the regional building regulations and the existing slope.

Moreover the design follows natural limitation given by the adjacent river.

The main idea of the project is to create one homogeneous sculpture for both distillery and living areas, opposing the existing building in an abstract way.

According to the characteristics of landscape the roof of the building is coated by facade material, using untreated rough sawn regional wood.

Cavernous holes in the courtyard of three museum buildings in Graz, Austria, lead underground into a new, shared entrance by Spanish architects Nieto Sobejano and local firm eep architekten (photographs by Roland Halbe).

The extension adds a conference hall, reading areas and an archive to the Joanneum Museum complex, which comprises a regional library, an art gallery and a natural history museum.

Glass surrounds the conical openings and each one tunnels down through one or two storeys to bring diffused natural light into the underground rooms.

Visitors enter the building via an outdoor elevator into the largest cone.

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos have completed a few museums this year – see them all here, including another one that tunnels underground.

Here’s some further explanation from Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos:

Joanneum Museum extension and refurbishment
International Competition 1st Prize 2006

Surface and Depth

The ground surface, the horizontal platform upon which most of our movements in the city occur, is very rarely the generating argument or the spatial support of a project. Perhaps as a result of that yearn for an identity that every new intervention seems to demand, architecture has tended to express itself throughout history by means of objects, volumes that have often established a difficult relationship with the scale of the urban environment in which they were inserted. In contrast, the extension of the Joanneum Museum emerged from the intention of acting within the strict limits of the horizontal plane of the city, offering a new public space based on an architectural proposal that is paradoxically simple in its depth and complex in its surface.

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The Joanneumsviertel of Graz is formed of three buildings of different periods and uses that up to now gave their back to one another and towards a residual rear courtyard: the Museum of Natural History – from the 18th century –, the Regional Library of Styria and New Gallery of Contemporary Art, the latter built at the end of the 19th century. As organisms belonging to the same institution, the project set out the need to endow the complex with a common access, welcoming spaces, conference hall, reading areas and services, aside from a lower level for archives and storage. Instead of falling into the temptation of developing an iconic intervention, as has often happened in recent extensions of existing museums, the project meant, however, a unique opportunity to carry out an at once urban and architectural transformation.

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If the historic center of Graz is known for its expressive roofscape, our proposal develops entirely below ground: we simply define a new pavement that as a large carpet takes up the whole exterior space between buildings and conceals below ground the spaces that house the required program. This decision allows acknowledging the value of the existing historical constructions – carrying out a refurbishment that is respectful towards their architectural characteristics – which acts only punctually in some interior areas without affecting the original exterior image and volume. The horizontal continuous surface of the new square is marked by a combinatorial series of circular patios that bring natural light into the underground spaces and house the entrance, the lobby and shared areas of museums and library, a gathering place from which to reach each one of them.

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The geometric abstraction implicit in every architectural work appears in the proposal with the boldness of a contemporary installation in the public space, transformed into an apparently random sequence of conical intersections derived from a single, virtual three-dimensional figure. Curved glass surfaces with a continuous silkscreen print filter light towards the interior and, inversely, illuminate the square with artificial light at night. A cultural institution like the Joanneum Museum, on which the Kunsthaus Graz is dependent, thus expresses the changing relationship between art and city.

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The square that centralizes the access to the museums is an unusual intervention in the urban space: a bet on the common action between plastic arts and architecture that will incorporate specific installations in collaboration with contemporary artists. The new extension goes almost unnoticed, concealed beneath the pavement that connects the historical buildings, as a materialization of a perforated horizon that expresses, and not only literally, that the depth of an architectural work can reside, unexpectedly, on its surface.

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Location: Graz (Austria)
Client: Government of Steiermark (Austria)
Architects: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, eep architekten

Project: Fuensanta Nieto, Enrique Sobejano, Gerhard Eder
Collaborators: Dirk Landt, Christian Egger,Bernd Priesching, Daniel Schilp, Michele Görhardt, Udo Brunner, Anja Stachelscheid, Sebastián Sasse, Nik Wenzke, Ana-Maria Osorio, Michael Fenske
Structure: zt-büro dipl.-ing. Petschnigg
Mechanical Engineers: Pechmann GmbH, Ingenieurbüro f. Haustechnik
Models: Juan de Dios Hernández – Jesús Rey
Project: 2007-2008
Construction: 2009-2011

Austrian studio [tp3] architekten have completed a stark white house in northern Austria with translucent sliding walls around a grassy courtyard.

A concrete base surrounds the ground floor of the three-storey House SL, which is set into the hillside between two towns.

The house wraps around part of the surrounding grass landscape to create a courtyard at first floor level.

White shutters slide over the windows of the main house.

Inside the house, a grey-painted staircase connects the first-floor living rooms with bedrooms above and a garage below.

Other houses in Austria from the Dezeen archive include one where three separate units are linked by glass passages and another made from concrete and raised up on legs – see more projects in Austria here, and see our recent coverage of Vienna Design Week 2011 here.

Photography is by Dietmar Tollerian.

The following few sentences are from the architects:

House SL, Engerwitzdorf, Austria

This building is located on a southern slope situated between the towns of Mittertreffling and Gallneukirchen.

The Mühlkreis motorway runs along the opposite hillside, and a dual carriageway along the valley, majorly compromising what is otherwise a beautiful area of land. This was also the starting point for the draft strategy.

The building was not positioned on the northern limit of the parcel but deliberately Verb as a ‘noise protection wall’ and as a ‘supporting wall’ to create a peaceful and even courtyard area facing towards the south. The courtyard opens on its western side, where it connects with the ‘natural’ garden that includes fruit trees.

The architectural configuration of the building takes reference to the traditional farm structures of the Mühlviertel with its tripartite arrangements, and the white and grey façades.

In our case, this is concrete and a polyurethane cover which stretches around the entire building and neighbouring building.

See also:

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Room Room by Takeshi Hosaka	House by 3+1 Architekti	Keyhole House by EASTERN Design

Steel whirlpools spiral into skylights in the roof of a church in Austria by architects Coop Himmelb(l)au.

The swirling roof, which was manufactured in a shipyard, rests like a table-top upon four steel columns over the prayer room of the Martin Luther Church.

Daylight penetrates the room’s stucco-covered ceiling through the circular voids, as well as through a street-facing facade of projecting glass triangles.

Through glass doors at the rear of the prayer room is a church hall used by the local community, while a sacristy, pastor’s office and toilets are situated alongside both spaces.

A 20 metre-high steel bell-tower soars up into the sky in front of the building’s entrance.

Other buildings by Austrian architects Coop Himmelb(l)au include a tower covered in a folded metal skin and an energy-generating canopy over a passageway – see all our stories about Coop Himmelb(l)au.

Photography is by Duccio Malagamba.

Here’s a more detailed description from Coop Himmelb(l)au:

Project
Martin Luther Church Hainburg, Austria
(2008-2011)

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Architectural Concept

In less than a year a protestant church together with a sanctuary, a church hall and supplementary spaces was built in the centre of the Lower Austrian town Hainburg, at the site of a predecessor church that doesn’t exist anymore since the 17th century.

The shape of the building is derived from that of a huge “table”, with its entire roof construction resting on the legs of the “table” – four steel columns. Another key element is the ceiling of the prayer room: its design language has been developed from the shape of the curved roof of a neighboring Romanesque ossuary – the geometry of this century-old building is translated into a form, in line with the times, via today’s digital instruments.

The play with light and transparency has a special place in this project. The light comes from above: three large winding openings in the roof guide it into the interior. The correlation of the number Three to the concept of Trinity in the Christian theology can be interpreted as a “deliberate coincidence”.

The church interior itself is not only a place of mysticism and quietude – as an antithesis of our rather fast and media-dominated times – but also an open space for the community.

The sanctuary gives access to the glass-covered children’s corner, illuminated by daylight, which accomodates also the baptistery. The actual community hall is situated behind it: folding doors on the entire length of the space between the two main chambers allow for combining them to one continuous spatial sequence. A folded glass façade on the opposite side opens the space towards the street.

A third building element, a longitudinal slab building along a small side alley, flanks both main spaces and comprises the sacristy, the pastor’s office, a small kitchen and other ancillary rooms. A handicapped accessible ramp between the three building components accesses the church garden on higher ground.

The sculptural bell tower at the forecourt constitutes the fourth element of the building ensemble.

Like other projects of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU the roof elements of the church building were assembled in a shipyard. The implementation of the intricate geometries required specific technologies of metal-processing and manufacturing only available in shipbuilding industry. The reference to shipbuilding is at the same time also reminiscent of Le Corbusier who served as an important role model, not least because of his La Tourette monastery.

Technical Description

Due to its shape with three skylights the roof of the Martin Luther Church in Hainburg was designed as a self-supporting steel construction with a stucco ceiling. The structure was assembled in a wharf at the Baltic Sea. The exterior skin is made of 8 mm thick three-dimensionally curved steel plates welded on a frame construction. In turn, this structure of steel plates and frame sits on a girder grid. The compound of grid, frame and steel skin transfers the total load of the roof (23 tons) on four steel columns which are based on the solid concrete walls of the prayer room.

The roof construction was delivered in four separate parts to Hainburg, assembled and welded on site. There, the coating of the whole structure was finished and mounted with a crane in the designated position on the shell construction of the prayer room.

On the interior ceiling the suspended frame structure was covered in several layers of steel fabric and rush matting as carrier layer for the cladding of the stucco ceiling, whose geometry follows the three-dimensionally curved shape of the roof with the skylights.

The free-form bell tower of the Martin Luther Church was also manufactured, by means of shipbuilding technology, as a vertical self-supporting steel structure with wall thickness between 8 and 16 millimeter, only braced by horizontal frames. The 20 meter high tower weighing 8 tons is welded rigidly to a steel element encased in the concrete foundations.

Team
Planning: COOP HIMMELB(L)AU
Wolf D. Prix / W. Dreibholz & Partner ZT GmbH
Design Principal: Wolf D. Prix
Project Architect: Martin Mostböck
Design Architect: Sophie-Charlotte Grell
Project Team: Steven Baites, Daniel Bolojan, Victoria Coaloa, Volker Kilian, Martin Neumann, Martin Jelinek

Client: Association „Freunde der Evangelischen Kirche in Hainburg/Donau”, Austria
User: Evangelische Pfarrgemeinde A.B. Bruck a.d. Leitha – Hainburg/Donau, Austria
Structural engineering: Bollinger Grohmann Schneider ZT GmbH, Vienna, Austria
Construction survey: Spirk & Partner ZT GmbH, Vienna, Austria

Main works / finishing: Markus Haderer Baubetrieb Ges.m.b.H, Hainburg/Donau, Austria
Steel construction (roof/ tower): OSTSEESTAAL GmbH, Stralsund, Germany
Steel Construction (façade): Metallbau Eybel, Wolfsthal, Austria
Fibre cement cladding: Eternit-Werke Ludwig Hatschek AG, Vöcklabruck, Österreich SFK GmbH, Kirchham, Austria
Altar: Idee & Design, Stainz, Austria

Project data
Site area: 420 m²
Sanctuary for 50 people, community space und ancillary rooms
Total gross floor area: 289 m²
Height (slab building / community space): 3,5 m
Height sanctuary: 6 m
Height roof: 10 m
Length: 25 m
Width: 10-17 m
Height bell tower: 20 m

Chronology
Start of Planning: 2008
Start of Construction: 08/2010
Opening: 04/2011

See also:

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Church in Foligno by Doriana Fuksas	Tampa Covenant Church by Alfonso Architects	Dove of Peace by Sunlay Design

Aluminium shingles resembling shiny fish scales cover this office and apartment block in Vienna by Austrian architects Superblock.

The four-storey NEU 31 block contains two street-facing offices and four apartments that overlook adjacent woodland.

Internal walls are extruded on the garden facade to create a canopy and balconies.

A ground level passageway cuts through the heart of the building to a concealed courtyard, providing access to that offices and apartments.

More projects in Austria on Dezeen »

Photography is by Hertha Hurnaus.

Here is some more information from Superblock:

NEU 31

The concept of the overlapping spatial structure, open to the outside as well as inside, with symbiotically conjoined residential and office accomodation units is not merely a lip service here, it runs throughout all parts of the building – the spatial solution appeared that beneficial to the architects to occupy it by themselves.

The site Neuwaldegger Straße 31 combines the city with the country within a narrow strip of land. The building, erected on the plot 15-17 meters wide and 82 meters deep, is an attached design, with its north facade facing a high traffic street and its south side favoring the unspoilt view to the adjoining Vienna Woods.

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The concept was to create a four-level diaphanous structure, which integrates all functions of living and working and yet offers enough privacy. All rooms and apartments are interlaced into each other and open not only to the outside but to the inside as well. This radically breaks with the classical scheme of a cube, which is bordered by four walls.

The center of the house is an open-top 30 sqm dimensioned courtyard, the glass panes of which connect the rooms of all levels optically and supply them with daylight at the same time. Both outer apartments on the above floors are configured over two storeys, that are glazed at the top and thus deliver light to the underneath. All of the apartments have spacious double-storey south terraces, that open up the structure of the house to the garden. Due to the open window areas of the ground floor the street space is as well provided with a vivid and exceptional scenery.

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The surface of the house facing Neuwaldegger Strasse is rigide. It’s ‘fish-scale’ facade is coated in white aluminium folding shingles that cover the whole of it – from the roof ridge to the ground. Thanks to the front garden there is no need for a gutter, the building cleans itself by means of the channelless eaves every time it rains.

The building was wholly developed and financed by the architect office SUPERBLOCK, beginning with the land purchase. After the completion the accommodation units were sold to like-minded people, the garden is used collectively. At the moment the house NEU 31 accommodates 22 working and residing persons, 1 dog and 2 cats.

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Office and Apartment Building, Neuwaldeggerstrasse / Vienna
Firm shell – airy core

Start of construction: May 2009
Completion: December 2010
Location: Neuwaldeggerstrasse 31, 1170 Vienna, Austria
Architects: SUPERBLOCK ZT GmbH
Client: NEU 31 Raum GmbH

4 apartments, 2 offices, 9 parking spaces
approx. 840 sq m floor area

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Life and Power Offices by Unsangdong Architects	Rooftop Office by Dagli+ Atelier d’Architecture	Studio for a Danish Artist by Svendborg Architects