Field Trip in Austria
One of the best things about the course of Architecture at the Technical University of Graz in Austria was the studio field-trips. The staff of Design 1 offered us an educational trip with four stops at highlighted architectural points.
The first was an area next to a lake under natural conservation for protection of the local birds and wildlife, which was going to be our site to build a 'ferienhaus', German for vacation-house. It was a calm space with shepherds taking their sheep for pasture; a real middle of nowhere to be honest. That was the challenge to the brief: create a vacation house for someone who has come to a place that he will be more or less undisturbed by other people and at the same time make the most out of creating a harmonious design that will not disturb the environment.
Second visit was almost 4 hours away and it was the property of a female artist who showed us her studio and home. Entering the house, we were overwhelmed by a great amount of excellently situated stone sculptures of similar colour variations. It was raining that day so the rock was looking even more polished than it originally was. It was a big amount of land for one single person therefore you could tell from the beginning that what we were expecting to see was quite of a big budget. First there was this kind of shelter of polished concrete. It certainly served well as a cover from the rain.
Then you could see the living space. A very cosy-looking door with gathered nuts next to it, shielded by a glass window, with a circled-outline cutout leading the wooden staircase to the basement.
We walked past this under the shelter of the trees and parapets of the house to avoid getting wet from the rain. After walking past the owner's fruitful trees and plantation, we entered her studio (see in the gallery above).
The studio was a square-plan building. It achieved the flexibility that a space for hanging painting and working as an artist requires. White walls sometimes with hanged canvases, were just a diversion from noticing the ceiling. Skylights flooding the room with light from all the edges and corners of the roof did their job with lighting while the central ceiling was held with cabled trusses. This brought in the breath of fresh air of some important engineering laid-exposed to the visitor. And as a room of creation, it ought to be raw in its structure.
Letting ourselves out of the studio after taking many pictures, and leaving from a different door than the one we came in, we were led to a downhill on the lawn with carefully selected plantation on each side of the downhill where slowly you notice a grid that makes the pathway more specific. While this is an A-mazing use of design in the changing of levels we found ourselves suddenly from outside inside with this smooth transition of levels at the same time.
Next stop, in Mies van der Rohe notes, our tutors wanted to show us through this small simple 'ferienhaus' how "Less is more". How simple lines of walls and fences make or break a living space. Referring to the Spanish Pavilion of Barcelona, this small vacation house expresses the needs in the most simplified way possible. Shown below is a collection of pictures from perspective views of the house:
From this stop, we went on foot to another gem hidden in the hills of Austrian suburbs. Brutal as ever, it was nice to discover various faces of movements in Austria while observing for ourselves the practicalities and functionalities of the constructions as a machine for living in.
Certainly, a precious experience, when in a new place, is to have local professionals showing you around this new country that is definitely more than expected.
