Project: Uralla Court
Site Area: 1511 m2
Gross Floor Area: 320 m2
Volume: 1490 m3
Client: private
Structure: Prof. K. Bollinger, Vienna, Austria

The project was developed from the individual ´users´ own needs which can be found in the atmospheric and spatial qualities of the structure. The central question was ´How would you like to live?´ and not ´How should your house look?´ The essential element of the project was the ´reading´ of the clients as individuals and ´feeling into´ the way they see their lives.

The result is an internally defined ´spatial sculpture´ with a range of different possibilities within its interior. It sets out a way of living and working together in which the opportunity to choose and personal freedom play an important role. The occupants can decide between different atmospheres, paths and spatial situations which determine the degree of interaction with the other or the intensity of thought over work. There are areas where the space flows and moves and others that are stable, interweaving various purposes and creating different awarenesses. Distance and openness interact with narrow ravine-like gaps, extroverted zones with sheltered niches and closed units. The whole house is a dance around ´open shelter´.

The existing landscape remains present throughout the whole project, the terrain being ´echoed´ in the different levels which flow through the interior of the house. The two structures form a pair whose deliberate independence, in a topographical and cultural context, is the result of the intense consideration of the brief and the qualities of the location itself. They create an exterior space that gives an unexpectedly urbane quality to the area between them and divides the block into private and open areas.