Family house Lower Austria

The naturally regulated growth of Lower Austrian towns guarantees the sustainable development of settlements. An obvious and anticipated outcome of the clear vision of local governments regarding the growth of a particular city is the creation of quality living areas with appropriate infrastructure. The residents of Bratislava also discovered the benefits of this approach after 1989, and together with local Austrians, they create an unparalleled and unique mix in the towns and villages of the federal state of Lower Austria.

In a similar context, the story of this house took place. The house is located on a plot typical for currently developed areas, with an area of approximately 700 m², oriented north/south - street/courtyard. The following factors were decisive for the spatial concept design - both neighboring plots are built up (to the west with a family house with a garage on the boundary of our plot, and to the east with a family house, whose main window openings and exterior spaces are oriented towards our plot) and the northern slope of our plot with a height difference of approximately 1.5 - 2.0 m from the level of the roadway.

Our design incorporated the restrictive conditions into the architectural concept in such a way that the mass of the ground floor (garage + living area of the house) is oriented linearly with a direct connection to the neighboring garage at the boundary of the plots, supporting the alignment with the street line. On the ground floor, our house has only a contact window from the kitchen to the street (to the north) and a main glazed wall to the garden (to the south), with no window openings toward both neighbors on the sides (east and west). We consider orienting the night part on the upper floor exclusively to the south into the garden as a standard mistake (in terms of maintaining thermal comfort), so we rotated the upper floor mass 90 degrees relative to the ground floor. The benefit is the eastern sun shining into both bedrooms in the morning. We achieved visual protection for the bedrooms on the upper floor from the house on the eastern plot by creating a roof terrace on the adjacent eastern side and raising the parapet walls to the appropriate height, thereby replacing the railing and achieving the necessary intimacy. The basement of the house contains a social room, a machinery room, storage, and sanitary facilities.

The house is constructed as a prefabricated wooden building with a heat demand for heating of 30 kWh/m²/a. The basement is made of monolithic reinforced concrete.