Loos in Bregenz Forest: Holiday home in Egg by Stefan Schweighofer

It was the first time that the unique plot, bordering on a wood above the municipality of Egg, Bregenzerwald’s largest, and commanding an unobstructable view of the valley below, had been noticed, having been the site of a container structure erected in the 1980s. The strip foundations left over from that time have been used by Stefan Schweighofer in the construction of his holiday home, which he merely shifted 1.50 metres valleywards to provide the entrance to the house a small forecourt. A narrow series of steps is all that connects the building to a dead-end road further up the slope.

While the outside of the building is in keeping with the construction and exterior design customs typical of the region, the inside is more reminiscent of a Viennese model, the sloping site having given risen to a true Raumplan in the manner of Adolf Loos, complete with offset levels, inserted volumes and spaces varying from 2.40 to 4.60 metres in height.

On the outside, it is only the irregular disposition of the windows, provided pale reveals against the black painted spruce boarding, that indicates the complex interior organization. Fibrated concrete shingles cover the roof in the same dark colour. The walls of cross-laminated timber and ceilings in spruce in the interior have been left in non-finished form, with solid, soaped ash floorboards rounding off the palette of materials.