House A, Dornbirn (AT): A Timelessly Beautiful House with Traditional and Modern Design in Hybrid Construction

Designed in wood and glass, House A, Dornbirn (AT) is a completed project by Dietrich Untertrifaller Architekten. Located on a mountain meadow above Dornbirn, Austria, this timelessly beautiful house offers both traditional and modern designs that showing respect for its landscape. This house is also built in a hybrid construction where the living level sits as a wooden construction. The project starts in 2008 and completed in 2009.

Context

House A sits on the outskirts of Kehlegg, a hamlet above Dornbirn on the edge of a steep south-western meadow. The polarity between the two-story valley façade and the one-story street façade is the result of this house hillside location. This polarity is also triggered the functional division into the sleeping rooms and an upper living area on the ground level that opens to the garden.

The house building blends into the surrounding landscape with its wooden outer skin, the flat pitched saddle roof, and clear cubature. It blends unobtrusively and respectfully as traditional farmhouses in the site region. The building also frames a triangular main courtyard on its roadside, while the courtyard is flanked by the flat annex of the garage that built in an exposed concrete in a right angle to the ridge of the building.

Design

The floor plan of the elongated house opens up with the living floor is designed as a continuous, all-round glazed living/dining area. This floor has no partitions and visually zoned only by the fireplace. According to the owner’s request, the architect plans a compact, barrier-free granny flat at the western end of the building that can be accessed from the entrance area.

Rooms

There is a single flight of stairs that leads to the lower floor with the private retreat rooms from the house entrance. The rooms of children and parents can be found along a straight corridor. All rooms in this house are oriented southwest to the stunning view of the valley and landscape, designed in room-high glazed.

Construction

House A is built in a hybrid construction where the false ceilings and the basement creates a massive plinth. The living level sits as a wooden construction in this plinth. It is possible to span the entire width of the building thanks to the full-walled triangular trusses in the attic.

Photographer: Bruno Klomfar