Location
Tyrol, Austria
Use
Residential
Client
Private
Collaborators
Gregor Loewit
Status
Completed 2025
Photography
coming soon
Situated on the outskirts of Innsbruck, where the village fabric meets the open alpine landscape, this family home finds its place on a slightly inclined plot bordered by meadows and backed by forest and mountain. Surrounded by nature on all sides, the house engages with its environment through both form and materiality, creating a strong yet sensitive presence at the edge of the settlement.
Set over two levels, the building is anchored into the terrain with a robust concrete plinth that houses the entrance, utility rooms, and several bedrooms. Above, a timber volume finished with vertical slats in a dark-stained larch forms the upper living level. This upper floor is designed as the main zone of family life — hosting the kitchen, dining, and living areas, the home office, and the master suite. Direct access to the garden allows the living spaces to extend into the landscape, further reinforcing the connection between inside and out.
The architectural layout follows an L-shaped plan, with a second mirrored L of timber louvers forming a partially enclosed courtyard at its heart. These operable vertical elements offer flexibility in responding to the site’s changing conditions and climate: they can be opened to frame expansive views across the meadows or closed to provide adjustable privacy as well as protection from the strong winds and solar control - reflecting an adaptive architectural approach attuned to its environment, climate conditions, and the evolving needs of its users.
Our office was commissioned for the detailed design and planning for construction, with a particular emphasis on landscaping, the façade and all aspects of the interior fit-out. Great care was given to material choices and detailing throughout: in contrast to the dark exterior, the interior is defined by a warm, calm palette. Built-in furniture and joinery are crafted in light oak, paired with oak flooring and microtopping surfaces in soft beige tones. This restrained but rich combination of textures lends the home a modern yet inviting atmosphere, balancing alpine simplicity with contemporary comfort.
Through careful coordination of façade articulation, spatial composition, and custom interior elements, the project delivers a coherent architectural expression — one that harmonises with its dramatic setting while offering a private and resilient home for modern family life.
Location
Tyrol, Austria
Use
Residential
Client
Private
Status
Completed 2023
Awards
Austrian Passivhaus Award 2024
Photography
© David Schreyer
The Maximilian House consists of both a renovation and an extension, transforming a single family dwelling into a multi-generation house that follows the passive house standard. Located in the midst of the Tyrolean Alps, the building takes advantage of the stunning surrounding landscape by thoroughly framing the views from within and hence creating smooth transitions from the internal to the external.
Set over multiple stories, the building has been designed to allow for various family constellations and their transformations over time, creating an accessible and inclusive living environment. Due to a flexible layout, the floor plan can be adapted to each individual user and their desired way of inhabitation. The use of local building materials combined with an ecological timber construction, were further factors that informed the overall design approach.
Location
Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia
Use
Residential
Client
Private
Status
Completed 2023
The Terasek House has been designed with an emphasis on tropical architecture, drawing strongly from Malaysian vernacular architectural elements to reimagine the terraced house.
The key feature of the house are the two full height internal courtyards with a louvered curtain walling system that encourages natural ventilation and natural light into the deep plan of the terraced house. The louvered curtain walling systems allows for the flexibility of privacy depending on how the rooms are being used.
The design aim is to create a built environment that seamlessly transitions between the raw structural elements that have been intentionally left exposed and the finished architectural elements.
Location
Hamburg , Germany
Use
Residential
Client
Private
Status
Completed 2024
Photography
coming soon
Step Terrace is a terraced house extension and front garden landscaping project for a family home in Hamburg. Located across the city’s international airport in the urban quarter Fuhlsbüttel, the intervention responds to the neighbourhood’s typical townscape of green front gardens through a series of stepping planting platforms that maximise rainwater permeability and biodiversity. The extension allows for flexibility and can be transformed into both an addition to the internal living space as well as a covered yard and therefore accommodates individual user requirements that may change over time.
Location
Waghäusel, Germany
Use
Cultural
Client
Church Collective Waghäusel
Status
Concept Design
The renewal of the church and its possibilities of a wider use across the community demand a revised approach and understanding of the internal arrangement and strategic usage of space.
In accordance with Chardin's central concept of "diaphaneity", the present design pursues the goal of not fixing the divine presence to given, static conditions or holding on to them. Rather, it should be perceived as a guided direction towards God. In this respect, the design does not create any structural divisions, but rather a subtle accentuation engraved within the floorplan that manifests the various tasks of church as well as the communal and cultural programmes to be held within the space
Generated from the simple forms of the straight line and the circle, which also dominate the architecture of the existing building, the inlays accommodate different spatial constellations and start to guide the user through the different programmes. The floor plan becomes a manifesto of its own: the patterns of the inlays in the floor indicate the directions and dynamics. When viewed from a distance from above, the interwoven individual lines start to appear as one unity.
Above these perspectives in the floor plan, one will start to see the space for the church's basic functions. The spacious church interior forms a "room for rooms" for multiple purposes: the liturgia, the diakonia and the martyria. The various entrances and pattern arrangements create different journey through the space – a journey in which one can choose its individual path.
Location
Tel Aviv Jaffa, Israel
Use
Mixed-use
Client
Tel Aviv Yafo Municipality
Status
Concept Design
The Cinematic Centre of Performing Arts – COPA – sets up a new cultural hub within Tel Aviv. With its Cinema, Performing Arts Centre and Educational Institute, COPA attracts various groups of users across the city, acting as a social incubator within its neighbourhood.
Being accessible from multiple routes, the elevated main entrance transforms into an open, yet sheltered plaza that activates the public square. This becomes the starting point for a remarkable and surprising journey that continuously weaves through the building.
Rising up across multiple connected platforms, the circulation through the building starts to define the programmatic arrangement while staging its occupation and use. This is emphasised by a translucent envelope, exposing the building to its urban context and hence making it accessible to both its users and observers.
Like a crystal in motion with intricate and colourful facets, the façade interacts with each individual by constantly changing its appearance as one moves around. Depending on the time of day as well as the angle of perception the building glistens in different colours, offering a visual spectacle - an experience of its own.
Due to the facades singula quality of shifting colours in reflection and transmission, the building will offer a distinctive experience externally and internally. The latter distinguishes it even further as the materials ability to project colourful reflections starts to animate the building, turning it into a show of light and surprising effects.
Location
Basel, Switzerland
Use
Cultural
Client
Architektur Basel
Status
Concept Design
Tracks of Traces is an architectural response to the ever-growing construction industry and the ongoing environmental exploitation this is causing. Moving away from the dogma of the new built, it addresses the matter of deconstruction and reconstruction. A continued building method that maintains, reuses and exhibits traces of the old within the new.
A flexible and adjustable structural frame system allows for an easy integration of reused building components, which are showcased and exposed externally as well as internally.
The multiplication of the structural frame results in a modular system, that can achieve various building typologies from single storey habitats to multi-storey buildings. Due to the adjustable angle of the horizontal members, the roof can be individually shaped according to the building context.
The Tracks of Traces Pavilion addresses the matter of re-materialization within the built environment by proposing a new architecture that acts as a transition from the buildings of the past to the buildings of the future. What used to shape the identity of fallen buildings is being reused and implemented to inform the future buildings.
Rather than recycling old materials, the design reflects a more radical approach, in which the historic traces are framed and exhibited through building framework. The building becomes an exhibition of its own.
As the internal frames follow the same adjustable track mechanism, the spatial configurations are limitless. Allowing for both, open and more secluded spaces, various activities and events can be hosted within.
While reused lowered radiators offer heated seating, the tracks can be populated with curtains and panels to create visual and physical boundaries.
Location
Riga, Latvia
Use
Cultural
Client
Riga City Council
Status
Concept Design
The Remembrance Sanctuary has been designed as a memorial ground that aims to preserve the essence of Latvian culture for celebration and mourning. It draws inspiration from the existing urban fabric of Riga with its multiple spires that break its relatively horizontal skyline while also taking advantage of the magical forest setting it is surrounded by.
Consisting of individual pavilions, it allows for the potential of growth and adaptation of niches over time. The intention of individual pavilions encourages a more intimate setting for smaller groups of visitors. Another critical design feature of the columbarium are the lanterns that light the pathways to the pavilions. These lanterns are inspired by the shafts often seen during the fires of Jani creating a mystical, yet comforting atmosphere as it is also known from the Night of Candles.
The construction of the sanctuary considers multiple environmental design factors. All the lighting on top of the shafts utilises special photoluminescent pigments from surrounding light sources to emit a soft ambient glow at night to provide clean energy. Solar panels on the top of the pavilion canopies provides power to light the individual pavilions. The pavilion canopies also allow rainwater to be harvested into an irrigation system for watering the foliage in the sanctuary. The foliage shown outside the site boundary in the design indicates the potential for growth to allow for carbon offsetting caused during the construction process in the hopes of achieving a net zero carbon design.
The remembrance sanctuary offers a new place where visitors can peacefully celebrate the lives of their lost loved ones, recharge and commune with nature in a design that tries to be kind to environment.
Location
Innsbruck, Austria
Use
Public Realm
Client
Municipality of Innsbruck
Status
Concept Design
QUERFELD is a proposal for the redesign of the Cathedral Square in the old town of Innsbruck revisiting aspects of the everyday life in the city by introducing an accessible, inclusive and ecologically sensible environment. The public realm intervention consists of an urban oasis, which frames the impressive views of the cathedral and the square creating a place to meet and linger for all. Starting with a spacious and accessible area that connects the cathedral and the square, the new public space welcomes visitors with exposed elevated lawns that transition into smaller green islands towards the central fountain.
The diagonal alignments of the surrounding buildings, which divide the Cathedral Square into different yet coherent zones, generate spaces for contemplation, gathering and activities that can be discovered and explored individually by each user. The individual green islands respond to the surrounding existing context and offer areas for both encounter and retreat.
The design aims to improve the urban climate and thus counteracts urban overheating. The deep strips and islands consist of bioretention planters that improve evaporative cooling by absorbing and temporarily storing rainwater before it seeps back into the ground. To achieve successful rainwater management and to introduce biodiversity, a regenerative planting strategy has been integrated into the design proposal.
For us the park is a collective space to celebrate the transient of the local individual, the community and the sporting visitor. The entrances into the park are translated into 6 themes derived from NHS England’s steps to wellbeing. Each theme is located according to the direct surrounding context and provides a different experience and journey through the park. The visible pavilion celebrates the arrival of each of these routes into 6 differently combined elements. The pavilion is seen not as a whole building, but fragmentary through an array of interstitial indoor and outdoor spaces. Acting as a spine to the body of the park that bleeds into its landscape, folds out its boundaries and encourages changeable activities.
Memories of the park’s history are resurrected. The term “Clitter - Clite” interpreted as “Clay house” is re-highlighted using natural clay in the form of rammed earth construction. The original farmhouse timber structures are reintroduced and reinterpreted to form fragments of the new pavilion. The geometry of a traditional football pitch is playfully deconstructed in a grid informing the spatial organisation and landscaping. The pavilion’s lifecycle is regenerative, not only through the architectural interventions such as rainwater harvesting but also through the notion of communal growth by encouraging local farming of produce and natural wilding. To promote an ever-growing community for Brent Cross.
The pavilion is a collective, a place for all
A new urban dweller has emerged throughout the last decades. One that disassociates quite clearly from the mainstream society. The millennial bohemian, the young professional hipster or the precarious worker might be attempts to term this new subject. In-between the mid-20s and late-30s and mainly following creative pursuits, he rejects conventional social norms – he is therefore single. He rejects private property and materialism - he is transient. He rejects bourgeois values and resides with like-minded people – he lives communally. As he lives free and irregular he is forced to a life of dedicated unconventionality.
Although this new urban dweller is present in most metropolitan areas, Hamburg, a city fundamentally affected by the history of the single dweller, will act as a paradigmatic case in order to revisit the architecture of single housing.
As Hamburg among the cities with the highest number of vacant buildings in Germany, the existing office buildings, the so-called Kontorhouses, will serve as a spatial framework to host the housing proposal.
The project aims to keep the spatial qualities of the open office floor plan by replacing conventional pre-programmed rooms with individual cores. Every dweller will be given one core of its own. These can be further taken apart into domestic objects which will allow the individual to inhabit the open floor plan around the cores. The module’s fixed core consists of a wet strip featuring a lavatory and a shower and changing room. To allow for a more generous space within these two internal spaces they can be extended from within. Furthermore the core has an express kitchen with a small fridge and space for the essential appliances such as a coffee machine, a microwave or a toaster. Furniture parts, which can be detached and become objects of domestic functions such as sleeping, eating, working, living, complete the individual core.
Whereas in the monastery clear boundaries define the individual and the communal life this project introduces an unconventional architectural element, the curtain, in order to create a radical form of life allowing the single dwellers to learn how to live together. As the curtains define temporary territories which can be individually changed the dwellers will be confronted with constant negotiation in between each other.
Just as the individual lives will shape the communal spaces, in return, the cohabitation of the single dwellers will allow the individual to shift in-between the private and the collective life, creating a space in which one can live alone but yet together.
Location
Tyrol, Austria
Use
Landscape
Client
Private
Status
Completed 2025
Photography
coming soon
Garden Refuge is a thoughtfully designed landscape extension of an existing family home on the outskirts of Innsbruck, nestled at the foot of the Alps. Responding to the realities of a changing Alpine climate, this project creates a vital cool refuge within the private garden—a serene oasis designed to offer relief during increasingly warmer days.
The new outdoor pool and terrace spaces are carefully integrated to maximize breathtaking views of the surrounding Alps, including a nearby glacier and mature trees from neighboring plots. Enhanced planting introduces richer greenery, creating a natural buffer and strengthening the garden’s connection to its alpine environment.
By blending functionality, sustainability, and aesthetic harmony, Garden Refuge embodies a modern retreat that embraces nature’s beauty while addressing the urgent need for climate-responsive outdoor living spaces.
Location
Preston, United Kingdom
Use
Public
Client
Private
Status
Competition Entry
Set on top of a prominent site on a slightly elevated hill, the proposed Mosque will form a new landmark for North Preston in Lancashire.
Being not only a landmark to the Muslim community but also to the city of Preston as a whole, Islamic architectural features, mainly through the use of metal screens, have been transformed to modern, yet intricate elements on the external, while they start to reveal more traditionally within the internal.
Multiple steps and green terraces, whose arrangement derives from projections of the Islamic star, connect the elevated site with the street level. These communal spaces continue to step across the multiple external roofs, forming roof top gardens and platforms.
The dialogue between inside and outside becomes most evident in the main prayer hall with the light gradually diffusing along the dome as it penetrates through the oculus.
Framed within the subtle tones of the rendered walls and metal screens sits the mihrab, which accentuates the prayer hall with its colourful and ornamental patterns.
Being a city shaped by constant migration, Istanbul’s population has been fostered by uprootedness and a constant search for belonging, hence putting forward the question of identity and communality.
The project aims to return to the neighbourhood, what is known as the Mahalle, and to allow for the re-establishment of communities from within. This could be seen as an attempt to slowly deconstruct the institutionally constructed conservative religious class and to allow for a new unified urban form to emerge.
Moving away from the street, it introduces the block as a new urban model to allow for more communal forms of inhabitation. Boundaries are defined by thick walls, introverting the block towards courtyards and the square.
Location
Munich, Germany
Use
Leisure
Client
Private
Status
Concept Design
Being located next to the ‘Englischer Garten’, Munich’s largest park, the Beach Volleyball Centre adds to the city’s recreational facilities while also acting as training and competition ground for professional athletes.
Next to multiple outdoor and indoor beach volleyball courts, the centre also features a club house including a restaurant and roof top terrace, a fitness centre, physiotherapy facilities as well as an athlete’s camp.
The structure was designed in timber construction and complies with the passive house standard. The building’s clearly structured wooden façade consisting of vertical battens of varying density is key to the design strategy and acts as integrated sun protection. Thus, the transparency of the envelope changes across the various levels and programs within the building.