GARDENROOM IN GLASS

Fotos: Rupert Steiner

“Gardenroom in Glass”

Addition to Denzel house, Vienna, 2002

The clients, owners of a 150 years-old Biedermeier house, needed more living space and better association with the east-south-sided beautiful garden. We opened wide the massive wall to the terrace and added a garden room in glass as living room enlargement on top of the existing terrace. The terrace was enlarged and an open fireplace and stairway to the lower garden - level was added.

The pure cubic form and the transparent body of the new garden room grant it autonomy and allow its addition without conflict with the traditional architecture of the old house. A pergola of aluminum yacht masts was designed to support the movable sunscreens over the glass house, terrace and stairway and so manages to create blurred boundaries and a gradual passage between house and garden. The emerging chain of interwoven spaces, each closed and protected to a different degree (walled in living room, glazed garden room, the in-between space of the terrace under the pergola and the open garden) produce a multi-layered membrane space. The aim of this special set-up was to obtain a flowing passage to the exterior through climatically differentiated zones. The glazed garden room takes central position in the chain and belongs in equal grade as well to the house, as to the garden. It is a space integrator from the outside to the inside.

Insignificant in its dimension, this small building, constructed completely in insulating laminated glass as glued glass-only construction, represents a pioneer work in our country.

As the Austrian technical construction standards (ÖNORM) does not permit silicon glued glass constructions without mechanical safety measures, it was a bold effort on the part of the architects, clients and the glazing company to build this innovative structure without any metal connections (except of the door hinges). We developed a new adhesive technique and ordered a series of tests by the State Institute for technical standards. So we could use adhesive connections between the supporting laminated glass beams and columns instead of screwed metal plates. In such a way the glass addition to house D. became the first consequent realization of glued glass-only insulated laminated construction in Austria.

But as advanced the technical details seems a demonstration of such know-how was of secondary importance for us. We regard the here-used progressive glass technology as a means to an end. The exaltation of architecture and technology is to be replaced by the atmosphere of a constantly changing natural environment. In that way the glazed garden room can serve as an activating organ of the pure perception.

AWARDS FOR THIS PROJECT:

SOLUTIA DESIGN AWARD 2003  from AIA (American Institute of Architects and Solutia inc., St. Louis, USA)

VIENNA CITY RENOVATION PRIZE  2003, honorable mention