PSLA Architekten tops off the urban townhouse with cascading roof terraces
Austrian studio PSLA Architekten has created a contemporary townhouse in Vienna’s historic 7th district as a “hybrid creation between house and garden”.
Set next to a narrow courtyard, the PSLA Architekten-designed house features multi-level interiors and cascading balconies that aim to reinterpret urban gardens.
The 165 square meter house contains living and working spaces for a young family across 11 floors that are reflected on the façade through its overlapping windows.
Stepped roof terraces connect to the ground floor garden and courtyard via a series of external steel stairs creating a sense of continuity around the house.
A brick-paved courtyard featuring infiltration trenches runs the length of the building and is lined with trees and planters to serve as a mini urban oasis.
Fixed openings on the south-facing facade provide access to daylight and views of the courtyard, while operable windows and doors are implemented on the east facades.
“The main concept of the project was to find strategies to deal with urban land as a vanishing and limited quantitative resource that needs to be efficiently reused through qualitative intensification,” said Ali Segatoleslami, co-director of PSLA Architekten.
“The project proposes a fundamental reshaping of the architectural typology of the house,” he told Dezeen.
The hybrid construction method used in the project uses hollow bricks and reinforced concrete panels of minimum thickness to maximize the building’s usable space.
On the facade, the large windows are finished in rose-coloured plaster, while the interior brick walls are finished with moisture-regulating plaster complemented by exposed reinforced concrete.
The ground floor consists of a workspace, entrance hall, kitchen and dining space, while a central steel staircase leads to the living spaces and bedrooms on the upper floors.
The light-filled interiors featured textured concrete, white walls and wood floors.
Retaining surfaces and densely planted terraces reduce the carbon footprint of the building as well as enabling passive cooling of the house and surrounding courtyard.
PSLA Architekten is a Vienna-based studio directed by Seghatoleslami and Lilli Pschill.
The project has been shortlisted in the Urban Home category of the Dezeen Awards 2023. Other shortlisted projects in this category include 19 Waterloo Street by SJB.
Photography was done by Lukas Schaller and Simone Posey.
