Haus am Moor by Bernardo Bader Architects, Austria

Today to rural Austria, where outside the town of Krumbach, Architekt di Bernardo Bader (Bernardo Bader Architects) have put together the arresting timbered ‘Haus Am Moor’.

I bet this place smells just delicious – timber walls, timber ceilings, timber everything. A perfect ‘Woodman’s Hall’.

The architect’s website informs us that sixty trees in total were used in construction. That’ll explain the bareness of the garden. The photographs are by Adolf Bereuter.

At a glance, it’s not far removed from a child’s drawing of a house – there’s that big gable roof, there’s a big square window, there’s a tree. Simplicity itself. I don’t think that this belies a greater complexity, as much as good detailing and good taste. Very simple rules about the palette have been laid down – inside and out, if it’s not timber, concrete, or black metal, it’s not invited. In the pallid northern European light the combination of such fair timber and the grey concrete strikes me as a bit ‘it rubs the lotion on its skin’ but I’ve little doubt that the clutter of daily life and occupation, the first victims of architectural photo shoots, would make the whole incredibly snug.

The moor from which the house takes its name runs up to the very doorstep. There’s a long deck which punches through the house forming a loggia for the entrance. Gappy sliding screens enclose the loggia – a proper breezeway.

Inside, the form of the house-shaped extruded exterior is legible in the living spaces and upstairs bedrooms. I like the big steel fire box, which folds around a log store, the stove itself, and then flaps down into the floor with a lovely black hearth. Relief is provided by the beautiful brass stove.

A strict trio of A330S pendants over the dining table (how did they bring such severity to something from the hand of Alvar Aalto I don’t know) but that’s about all the spatial delineation that area gets – black lumps by day, and what is most likely a gorgeous low-hanging puddle of light by evening.

Upstairs, the pale timber wraps relentlessly around everything. The design is elemental and pure, and as above I kind of yearn to see a bit of mess in these photos to take it from sylvan prism to beautiful home!

We’ll leave it there. A bien tot!