Year: 1998
Client: Family M, Vienna
An apartment in an old building with a floor plan typical for the 20th district (2 rooms, kitchen, 2 cabinets, bathroom, toilet) was unsuitable for the requirements of the future users: small rooms with a winding corridor, tiny kitchen, bathroom without natural light, position of the toilet could not be changed.
The wishes of the owners
A spacious living room with integrated kitchen, where you can cook for and with guests, a table for 10 people and importantly: a separate place for the espresso machine.
The bathroom should have a bathtub and shower, space for washing machine and sufficient storage space.
Space and furniture concept
The non-load-bearing walls between the entrance, kitchen, hallway and one room were removed to create a spacious room. Derived from the functions, I divided the space into four zones: Anteroom, Reception, Kitchen, Dining area.
A central cube intersects with the structure of the restroom to visually minimize it in the space while accommodating various functions of the adjacent zones: the coat rack in the vestibule, a floor-to-ceiling shelf at the reception, the large refrigerator, and the wet area of the kitchen. The counter is a deliberate barrier for visitors who linger only briefly, or the first point of contact for guests. For the family, this place is a kind of "office".
To save energy, I separated the vestibule area from the rest of the room by a glass-only wall. This resulted in no loss of light and the overall feeling of space was preserved due to the transparency.
As a buffer zone between arriving and lingering, the reception area also serves as an access zone for the other adjacent rooms.
Bathroom & closet space
The task was to create a bathroom with daylight and maximum function in a small space. Swapping the former bathroom and storage room allowed daylight to enter the bathroom through an existing hallway window and through a glass shower wall to the closet space behind. The bathtub functions as a generous shower stall with floor-to-ceiling glass-only sliding door. To save space, the wall between the bath and closet space was replaced with a floor-to-ceiling mirrored sliding door closet that can be used from either side.
The corridor windows with the original grilles of the house as a formal contrast to the clear structure inside the bathroom were of course retained.
