Site area 862m²
Footprint 188m²
Usable area 383m²
GFA 470m²
Start of construction February 2021
Completion June 2022 (incl. outdoor areas July 2023)
Executive architect: studio butter – Michael Wieser
Photographer: Hertha Hurnaus
To escape the bustle of central Vienna, a family of four wanted a home in the green that would also house a generous artist's studio. They found the right sloping plot in Perchtoldsdorf. The nature of the site practically invites the different living worlds to be stacked. So the 3-metre-high artist's studio is created in the basement, partly nestled into the slope, partly level with the garden. The covered terrace is also used as an outdoor studio.
Above it, at street level, are the parents' bedroom and the two boys' bedrooms with their bathrooms. The green of the surrounding tree crowns is within reach everywhere. On this level, towards the street, are also the entrance area and the garage, with an inconspicuous garage door clad like the façade.
The open internal staircase, running from the studio all the way up to the attic, is accompanied by a glazed lift. The upper floor holds the dining, kitchen and living area, which opens on the garden side onto a large, partly covered terrace with a view towards the Perchtoldsdorfer Heide. An external staircase leads directly into the garden with pool and guest house. The kitchen area, with a hidden scullery and a breakfast counter, faces the street.
The attic, conceived as a media room, study and music room, has partly covered terraces on both the street and garden sides. On the garden side, instead of a railing to the terrace below, there is a floor-level “hammock”. From there the view sweeps over the trees and on across the vineyards to Vienna – a reminiscence of the family's old attic flat from their Vienna days. From here, too, an external staircase leads down to the lower terrace and from there directly into the garden.
Like a kind of scaffold of stairs, railings, openings and partial roofs, the vertically linked outdoor areas allow the residents to make the outside spaces their own step by step. They can be fitted out at will with various add-ons such as swings, climbing frames, screens or hammocks.
On the street side the house takes its cue from the typical neighbouring houses with pitched roofs, but reinterprets the roof as a partly covered outdoor space. There the large single-family house appears restrained and fits into the tectonics of the neighbouring street fronts. Towards the garden, however, the house rises impressively out of the slope and opens up to the landscape.
The basement, half set into the ground, and the garage are built in reinforced concrete; the floors above are timber construction, with wall and floor elements of cross-laminated timber, combined with partly exposed steelwork. The use of untreated wood as a building material – also for parts of the interior fit-out and the ventilated, pre-weathered timber façade – underlines the sustainable and efficient concept of the building. With integrated PV elements across the entire roof (Sun-Skin, Eternit with battery storage), deep boreholes and a heat pump, Haus Max is almost self-sufficient.
