Gradient Monolith

Covering a part of the forested valley of Gablitz, a small Austrian town on the western periphery of Vienna, the site Is located on the main street – Linzerstraße that passes through the town and connects it directly to the capital. The old abandoned house currently occupying the steep terrain of the site is to be replaced with a new apartment building comprised of six individual units. Given these requirements, the challenge for this project was to condense the program into a compact architectural volume, whilst taking advantage of the topology.

 

Submerged underground on three sides, the garage takes up the easily accessible street level, leaving the unearthed upper levels for the accommodation units. Each upper floor is functionally divided along its central axis, forming two symmetrically identical apartments. This distribution principle is altered on the two uppermost floors, creating two internally connected duplexes.

 

The topography bordering the volume is cascaded, enabling the extension of each unit’s usable area outdoors, creating private patios. Being completely detached from the terrain, the top duplexes feature private rooftop terraces with a panoramic view of the valley.

 

Reducing the visual dominance of the mass of the building in its context required refined sculpting and treatment of its volume. Each side is vertically creased and folded, forming an octagonal prism. The border of the silhouette is successively offsetting inwards on the vertical axis, creating a Ziggurat-esque monolith. The façade’s materialization follows the same graduality of its form – lighting the exposure of the desaturated brick skin towards the crown shaped top.

 

The uniformed single swing vertical windows are evenly distributed along the perimeter, allowing the façade’s mass to dominate the composition, creating a monumental appearance.

 

 

Location: Gablitz, Austria
Client: Private

Status: Concept
Year: 2023

 

Project Team:

Kostantin Trpenoski

Zoran Petrovski