Lakehouse in Zell

Louis Kahn’s Trenton Bath House (Trenton, New Jersey, 1955) was the starting point for this house on Lake Zell, snuggled in the Austrian Alps. Thus the pyramid hip roof sitting on a square base. Thus the distribution of the ground floor, that contains the house’s more public spaces. Thus the courtyard, which takes its queue from the Bath House’s oculus.

But here a wooden level has been added to accommodate the private quarters. A basement contains an ample TV room, laundry room and storage, and a white steel spiralling staircase articulates all three levels. And instead of Khan’s concrete block masonry, insulated concrete has been employed for the base. The ensuing walls, fifty centimetre thick, afford the ground floor a categorical impression of stability, which the design then revels in finding counterpoints to. Thus the litany of strategies to balance the frigidity of the taciturn polished concrete inside: a lush yellow curtain in the basement, colourful curtains in the ground floor, a confident, joyful carpet in the first floor, bathrooms covered in bright coloured tiles, and a waterproof curtain that wraps around the garage.

The result is a building that is oddly classical. Classical in the way it administers its weight, so that it seems to sit confidently, rather stately, staring at the lake and the old town of Zell am See across. Classical in its shape. It is rather classical too because all elevations are nearly identical, their porticos right in the middle or slightly off-centre. It’s unexpectedly symmetrical, slightly Palladian, which could hardly be achieved were the garage not detached, and so what looks like a sleek lounge is in fact parking – a pavilion for the automobile. A sort of villa + folly solution, and the tension between the two volumes ends up determining where the entrance to the house is.

And accidentally, the house reminds one of Frank Lloyd Wright - Wright’s Westcott House (1908) and DeRhodes House (1906) particularly, with their wooden first floors sitting on sturdier bases. Perhaps because of that the house has a whiff of Japan – Wright’s work being especially indebted to Japan.

But the foreign references have not sapped the Zell dialect from the project. Far from it. Encouraged by Kahn’s Bath House, the design has avoided the temptation to disguise the pitched roof, as modern architecture tends to. Instead, the house wears its steep slopes with pride. Nor is the overhang coy. It extends generously and plays with the wooden shutters underneath, which seem like a natural progression in delicacy and craftsmanship when seen against the traditional woodwork of neighbouring houses half hidden in the Alpine woods.

Vienna
September 2022