House Permeated by Nature

architect Hans Gangoly
project Family House, Graz, Austria
written by Eva Guttmann

 

In Flann O’Brien’s book The Third Policeman, the narrator searches for a police station. After he finally finds it, he realizes that the building has no depth. It consists only of the façade, it is two-dimensional.

 

In a way, the Schmuck house has a similar component, but resolved in a completely different way. The house set on a hillside has a single floor, the entrance side is reduced to just a few elements: two horizontal raw concrete slabs, in between them – recessed into the depth, also made of raw concrete – the wall of the house, one door, no windows, three fine columns and a tool shed as the northern end of this frontal space. When you come to the house for the first time, you cannot imagine what kind of rooms are developed inside, so sharp is the border between the interior and exterior.