Villa S. | Coop Himmelb(l)au

Because of restrictive building regulations, the summer villa on the banks of Lake Millstatt in Carinthia had to fill exactly the volumetric outline of a prior building on the same site. This led to a holiday house defined in its form by the integration of the pre-defined roof shape and inclination, a leaning tower, a generously proportioned outdoor area, and a unique spatial composition. This structure resulted from a simple conceptual operation: a “house” with a pitched roof is placed on a “table,” in truth a reinforced-concrete platform, so that a completely free two-storey space is created beneath the table, namely on the ground floor. The “table top” separates the private rooms of the upper area from the semi-public and transparent spaces in the lower area.