Haus Moosberg

Haus Moosberg sits above Gmunden on Lake Traunsee, in the Salzkammergut, the Austrian lake district. The house is high enough on the hillside to feel apart from the town, surrounded by woods, meadows and blackberry hedges, with cowbells from the neighbouring pastures for a soundtrack. The lake is the centre of everything here, with a swimming spot ten minutes' walk down the hill, the Grünberg cable car close by, and the Höllengebirge rising across the water. Gmunden itself has the town centre and the trams, and Linz is about thirty miles away, Salzburg forty.

Anna and Jörg are both from Gmunden and had moved to Vienna to study. During the pandemic they spent a lot of time back home with their children but had no place of their own, so they decided to build one. Jörg had studied architecture at the Angewandte in Vienna and had always wanted to build something himself, and this was the moment. What they made slots between the half-timbered houses and gabled roofs of the area without imitating them: a striking modern building whose roof drops gently toward the valley, with big glass fronts that pull the view inside. The living room runs to fifty square metres around a wood-burning fireplace, with a warm oak kitchen and bar, and the terraces wrap around across three levels. Anna describes it as a place where your pulse slows down immediately. They were clear from the start that it shouldn't be just for family and friends.