Immediately adjacent to the garden house, an opportunity arose to expand the site to include another historic building: a semi-dilapidated house dating from the mid-17th century that originally served the needs of the raftsmen working on the banks of the Enns River in the town of Steyr.
The building once housed a horse forge, sleeping quarters, and several cooking areas—features still discernible today in the vaulted ceilings. We also reconstructed a timber winter garden that had long since been removed. Today, the building accommodates three residential units across three floors.
A shared forecourt has been recreated at the site of the original threshold to the medieval entrance of the Enns district; it is framed by the concrete wall leading to the garden house, which has now been extended.
Between the buildings, a stepped passageway—flanked by a terrace situated high above the river—leads down into the garden.
The raftsmen’s house itself was restored using materials with a compelling tactile quality: the lime for the plaster was slaked on-site, the roof was clad in fiber-cement shingles, the double-cased windows were crafted from larch, and the winter garden was finished with local fir slats.
To our surprise, the removal of plaster layers revealed floral frescoes on the south façade, which were preserved as a window into the past. Since these were visible on both the pilaster strips and the intervening wall sections, it is likely that the entire street-facing side was once richly painted in vibrant colors.
