Once in a while something extraordinary comes along the architect’s drawing board, like this request to design a kindergarten for a mouse, with a castle and a park.

Sketches are where architectural ideas land first after leaving the brain. No medium is closer to the mind than freehand drawing. Here a rendering of the mezanine of House Schmitten, with a red flower to boot.

Sketches are where architectural ideas land first after leaving the brain. No medium is closer to the mind than freehand drawing.

Throwback to TheLetterA, the first issue of TheLettersABCD. Stay tuned for TheLetterC this November!

Editing means having to let go of a number of great images. This collage was created to illustrate an article on Austrian urban sprawl for the first issue of TheLettersABCD, but in the end it didn't make the cut. Warsaw's Palace of Culture (Lev Rudnev, 1955) looms irreverently over an old postcard of Zell am See, cheekily aiming at modernism's doctrinal refusal to incorporate historicism. Here's an extract of the article (which did make the cut): “(...) place old towns on the psychoanalyst’s couch and you will find this: Behind the fear of tall buildings lies not the phobia of things high but of things modern: flat roofs, posts and lintels, right angles and glass. The whole modernist alphabet. Tall need not imply modern but it does. Why? Because a future where tall buildings aren’t modern—God forfend!—is so radical, that it doesn’t even occur to modernism’s enemies.” From "Will the Future get you high?", The Letters ABCD, N. 1 - Letter A. Vienna, 2023

The Letters ABCD is Steiner Architecture’s inaugural magazine. Necessarily open-ended, protean, confident, cheeky. It strives to be more than a glorified business card. But can it? Never mind. It showcases the studio’s built projects, unbuilt projects, preliminary arguments, not-so-preliminary arguments, inchoate ideas. Stay tuned for LetterC!

“Austrian urban sprawl is a fact, and a future where cities grow tall, not wide, seems the less likely outcome. But place old towns on the psychoanalyst’s couch and you will find this: Behind the fear of tall buildings lies not the phobia of things high but of things modern: flat roofs, posts and lintels, right angles and glass. The whole modernist alphabet. Tall need not imply modern but it does. Why? Because a future where tall buildings aren’t modern—God forfend!—is so radical, that it doesn’t even occur to modernism’s enemies.” From "Will the Future get you high?", The Letters ABCD, N. 1 - Letter A. Vienna, 2023

“When the Autogrill bridge died there were no mourners. These paradigmatic pit stops fraught the Italian highways, and for decades their daring leap across the lanes expressed enthusiasm for the car with total candour. No trace in them of the guilt that would later hang over anything redolent of oil. They were true precincts of contem- plation and merriment, harmless, like the sites of fête champêtres, now unenjoyable in a millennium when staring out a highway bridge feels like contemplating the end of the world.” From "Capriccio Elettrico", The Letters ABCD, N. 2 - Letter B. Vienna, 2023 Image: The bridge over the Italian highway in the age of the electric car. Collage over Canaletto’s Capriccio con edifici palladiani (1756–1759), Steiner Architecture ff, 2023. Reproduced with permission of the Galleria Nazionale Parma.

The Letters ABCD is Steiner Architecture’s inaugural magazine. Necessarily open-ended, protean, confident, cheeky. It strives to be more than a glorified business card. But can it? Never mind. It showcases the studio’s built projects, unbuilt projects, preliminary arguments, not-so-preliminary arguments, inchoate ideas.

Barn red? Burnt umber? Redwood? Indian red? Smoked salmon? Windsor tan? Chestnut? Marron? Technically the colour is RAL 3016, and when applied on wooden boards it turns this family chalet into a kinky incarnation of regional timber-cladding, a cheeky expression of folk. But from the old hotel to which the chalet attaches to like an appendix, the architecture draws no more. Other than the wooded exterior, it is a compositional non sequitur. It gainsays it - see the modified Diocletian window on the back which points to foreign styles. The annex propounds an alternative way of being in the mountains of Zell am See. All wants for views are supplied profusely by outsize glass sheets on three of its four sides, just short from being full curtain walls. On their wooden frames RAL 3016 has been applied with different levels of saturation to lend variety - an exercise in subtlety in spite the audacity of their redness. And in contrast to the distant, chilly polished concrete of the walls inside. The double heighted interior houses the family’s living room and dining room in the ground floor. A curve in the mezzanine permits a small home-office and converses with the arc of the inverted Diocletian window across, also referenced by the half-circle section of the steel pillar that supports the staircase. Bedrooms and kitchen remain on the body of the old structure, now rendered the primary host, the hotel proper, and which this very family runs. Photos by @florian_holzherr

Barn red? Burnt umber? Redwood? Indian red? Smoked salmon? Windsor tan? Chestnut? Marron? Technically the colour is RAL 3016, and when applied on wooden boards it turns this family chalet into a kinky incarnation of regional timber-cladding, a cheeky expression of folk. But from the old hotel to which the chalet attaches to like an appendix, the architecture draws no more. Other than the wooded exterior, it is a compositional non sequitur. It gainsays it - see the modified Diocletian window on the back which points to foreign styles. The annex propounds an alternative way of being in the mountains of Zell am See. All wants for views are supplied profusely by outsize glass sheets on three of its four sides, just short from being full curtain walls. On their wooden frames RAL 3016 has been applied with different levels of saturation to lend variety - an exercise in subtlety in spite the audacity of their redness. And in contrast to the distant, chilly polished concrete of the walls inside. The double heighted interior houses the family’s living room and dining room in the ground floor. A curve in the mezzanine permits a small home-office and converses with the arc of the inverted Diocletian window across, also referenced by the half-circle section of the steel pillar that supports the staircase. Bedrooms and kitchen remain on the body of the old structure, now rendered the primary host, the hotel proper, and which this very family runs. Photos by @florian_holzherr

Barn red? Burnt umber? Redwood? Indian red? Smoked salmon? Windsor tan? Chestnut? Marron? It’s technically RAL 3016, and when applied on wooden boards it turns this family chalet into a kinky incarnation of regional timber-cladding, a cheeky expression of folk. But from the old hotel to which the chalet attaches to like an appendix, the architecture draws no more. Other than the wooded exterior, it is a compositional non sequitur. It gainsays it - see the modified Diocletian window on the back which points to foreign styles. The annex propounds an alternative way of being in the mountains of Zell am See. All wants for views are supplied profusely by outsize glass sheets on three of its four sides, just short from being full curtain walls. On their wooden frames RAL 3016 has been applied with different levels of saturation to lend variety - an exercise in subtlety in spite the audacity of their redness. And in contrast to the distant, chilly polished concrete of the walls inside. The double-height interior houses the family’s living room and dining room in the ground floor. A curve in the mezzanine permits a small home-office and converses with the arc of the inverted Diocletian window across, also referenced by the half-circle section of the steel pillar that supports the staircase. Bedrooms and kitchen remain on the body of the old structure, now rendered the primary host, the hotel proper, and which this very family runs. Photos by @florian_holzherr