The Retreat

“Architecture is space that inspires, changes, enriches us,” says Austrian architect Peter Lorenz from Lorenz Ateliers, who designed this refuge outside Innsbruck.

PHOTOS: PETER KOREN, CHRISTIAN FLATSCHER

THIS INNSBRUCK house by Lorenz Ateliers is located on a hill in the family’s estate on the southern slope above the city, with 360-degree views onto the Tyrolean mountains.

The old house of the grandparents was demolished to make way for a new “adventure into the uncertain”, says architect Peter Lorenz.

After five years of planning, doubt, reflection, interruptions, the project was completed last year. The first Christmas card after the move showed pictures of the house and a quote from the architect from the time of the collaboration: “Architecture is space that inspires, changes, enriches us,” he had said. And that is what this house set out to achieve.

The longitudinal axis of the long and narrow building site is located on beautiful grounds and is the “imaginary connection” between the hunting lodge on the Hechenberg in the west and the family business in the city centre. The surrounding panorama and natural setting are breath-taking.

Nature should never be corrected

What is effectively a concrete box appears to be so light and literally floating, but Lorenz admits it was no mean feat. Many 3D models and sketches later, they found the solution “for something to look so easy and self-evident”, but at the cost of an “enormous effort”.

The lines of the building are rigid and yet it flows seamlessly into the natural setting. This is the result of a respect for nature – the only religion Lorenz follows – and his sense of responsibility towards the planet, he explains. Nature should never be corrected.

“Everything man builds, he incurs a debt with nature… The architect – through enormous devotion – can keep this guilt as low as possible.”

Lorenz believes that architecture should not compete with nature, but it should present the opposite – the geometry. And that’s what he did here.

The house would appear to be built on water, but Lorenz says that is “just a dream”. It is actually on an artificial pond, with natural filtering.

From the sauna, modelled on the original Finnish hut, with cladding in carbonised wood, you can jump directly into it.

Sitting on the bank, the sauna hut houses the old parlour of the grandparents. It was saved from the demolished building and assembled here.

The living room/kitchen open onto the setting sun, while the fireplace and children’s rooms look over to the city centre, and from the top is yet another view of Innsbruck.

The only slit in the building is cut into the northern façade, where an elevator can be comfortably docked in the future if the steps become too difficult to negotiate, Lorenz explains.

As for all the glass and the supposed lack of privacy it may bring along, Lorenz says curtains would do the trick. The advantage, on the other hand, is to have nature in the house; that feeling of living outside.

The single-storey staircase divides the building into two parts so that the east side can also accommodate two small, separate, one-room apartments for guests. This concept works well with single-family dwellings, which quickly become too big after the children have left the nest...

In fact, Lorenz finds it difficult to reconcile the planning of single-family homes with his conscience: they require too many resources and too much use of the landscape, while contributing little to urbanisation.

“As a rule, we critically examine the wishes of the interested parties for an individually planned family home and offer alternatives, because the costs for small units grow exorbitantly, the required commitment of the builder is always underestimated and the planning effort is immense,” Lorenz says about working on single-family homes.

In this case, the happiness the house has imparted made the mission worth it…

So what is the secret to building such a modern structure in the heart of nature and yet retaining the harmony, without disturbing the peaceful environment? “The secret is a certain modesty, artlessness, and elementariness, simplicity, ‘designlessness’…”

It also lies in the consciousness on the part of the client of what is necessary, the quality, the spaces, without being distracted from the fundamentals by the needlessness, redundancy and decoration, Lorenz adds.

Asked about the starting point of the project and what he set out to create, Lorenz thinks the major problem of architects is actually if they want to create, have ideas and a lot of fantasy. This is the reason for so many failures, he insists, and so many projects show the worrying psychological status of some architects and their clients.

“I try my best not to start with the desire to create some super idea. The architect must, first of all, observe, perceive, read, understand a site, a location, a client. He has to start like a child from zero!

“Once a situation has been understood, the requirements defined and the surroundings respected, only then can the architect start to try out, to sketch, to build models etc…”