Each May, the Liechtenstein family opens the doors of its medieval Austrian castle, Schloss Hollenegg, to the public. Inside, nestled among layered period interiors – including a Renaissance courtyard and a Baroque church – visitors encounter contemporary works by established and emerging designers alongside historical objects from the castle’s own collection, all united by a shared theme.

‘This is the last of a series of exhibitions dedicated to materials,’ explains Italian-born curator and the event’s founder Alice Stori Liechtenstein. ‘After exploring glass, ceramics, wood and textiles, metal seemed the perfect choice. Metals are the building blocks of our planet and literally hold our world together.'

For ‘Element: Metal’, Stori Liechtenstein has pulled an array of metal objects from the castle’s historic collections – from silver tableware and ornamental pieces to weaponry and architectural fittings – offering insight into the material culture of past centuries. Alongside these storied objects are contemporary works by designers and artists selected for their ‘exceptional craftsmanship, original conceptual approaches, and responsible engagement with the material’. It's hard to imagine a more romantic setting.

Schloss Hollenegg: design's most poetic experimental residence

Born in Milan and raised in Bologna, Stori Liechtenstein founded Schloss Hollenegg for Design in 2015. Each May, the non-profit cultural institution transforms the 21,500 sq ft, 52-room castle – which has belonged to her husband Alfred Liechtenstein’s family for two centuries – into a space for design research, critical thinking and experimentation. Alongside the annual exhibition, the institution runs a residency programme that provides emerging designers with the opportunity to develop new work within this unique historic context.

Of the 18 designers and artists featured in the exhibition, 12 spent time at Schloss Hollenegg during the summer and autumn of 2025, developing site-specific pieces. Finnish jewellery designer Ildar Wafin, sponsored by the Finnland Institut in Germany, collaborated with historic Viennese silversmith Jarosinski & Vaugoin to produce an unusual silver table bell that pays homage to the bells in the castle’s church tower. Its sinuous shape nods to the centuries-old Canadian vine that climbs the courtyard walls.

Elsewhere, Japanese artist Junko Mori, supported by her gallery Adrian Sassoon, has been developing the concept of the frame; American fine artist Elliott Hundley, with support from Friedman Benda, has created a chandelier and mirror for Henriette’s bedroom; while Lithuanian designer Mantas Lesauskas has created a chess board.

Meanwhile, designers Hannah Kuhlmann, Anna Zimmermann and Soft Baroque, supported by Copenhagen-based art and design gallery Etage Projects, have brought recent metal works to the exhibition.

For the first time, the institution has partnered with aluminium and energy company Hydro, which is presenting three projects, by Max Lamb, Philippe Malouin and Sabine Marcelis – works developed to showcase Hydro’s Circal 100R recycled aluminium made from post-consumer scrap. At a time when designers are increasingly reconsidering how materials are sourced, reused and preserved, metal offers a particularly rich lens through which to explore ideas of permanence, repair and transformation.

‘Today we frame recycling as an environmental necessity, but in the past reuse was simply part of everyday life,’ reflects Stori Liechtenstein. ‘Materials were expensive, labour-intensive and difficult to source, so objects were rarely discarded. They were repaired, adapted, melted down or repurposed over generations. This creates a natural dialogue between the contemporary aluminium works and the historic interiors of Schloss Hollenegg. While the new projects openly address sustainability and circularity, the historical objects reveal a long tradition of material care and longevity.’

In another first, Schloss Hollenegg has also partnered with the TransArts department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Die Angewandte), offering seven students – Jordi Albers, Klemens Hegen, Lea Liebl, Elena Riener, Luise Lutz & Michels Strümpf, and Lorenzo Zerbini – the opportunity to develop work for the exhibition.

‘I see much more overlap and, for me, the boundaries between design, applied arts, collectible design and art have been slowly dissolving,’ says Stori Lichtenstein, reflecting on how the design landscape has shifted since the institution’s founding 11 years ago. ‘I think categorisations are useful to understand what we are talking about, but ultimately these disciplines are all part of the same cultural ecosystem.

‘I have always been interested in the narrative potential of objects and, in recent years, I have concentrated more on how to present them in engaging ways for the public,’ she continues. ‘Collectible and experimental design are, more than ever, wonderful vehicles for engaging with contemporary material culture.’

'Element: Metal' runs at Schloss Hollenegg Castle until 31 May 2026

schlosshollenegg.at

There are wine weekends, and then there is something altogether more transportive: a kind of vinous altitude adjustment where place, palate and people align in a way that lingers long after the last glass is drained. High up in the Ötztal Alps, the annual Wein am Berg gathering in Sölden, hosted by the quietly luxurious Das Central hotel has, for 23 years, honed that alchemy into an art form.

At first glance, the proposition sounds deceptively simple: a long weekend devoted to prestige local wines and great Michelin-Star-level food. But this is no hotel-bound tasting junket. Here, the experience is deliberately immersive, pulling you up the mountain – quite literally – into a rarefied environment where the rules of flavour seem to shift. The slopes, still brushed with plenty of late-season snow, become both playground and laboratory; here, one's skis are as essential as the corkscrews.

Fine wine at 3,000 metres

The rhythm of the weekend is set early. Mornings begin with the crisp hush of alpine air, skis carving across a challenging piste that has hosted world championship races. It’s a setting that sharpens the senses before a single drop of wine has passed your lips. By midday, you’re unclipping your boots and stepping into a tasting that feels less like a static line-up and more like a curated conversation between terroirs.

Austria, quite rightly, takes centre stage. This is, after all, a country whose wines have quietly surged into the upper echelons of global respect. Producers from the Wachau, Kamptal and Burgenland pour with a confidence born of precision and heritage. Grüner Veltliner shows its many personalities: peppery, textural, quietly powerful - while Rieslings hum with crystalline acidity and brightness. Among the standouts, the Blanc de Blancs from Weingut Bründlmayer offers a compelling reminder that Austria’s sparkling wines can stand shoulder to shoulder with more famous counterparts. Such effervescent prowess sits wonderfully alongside a majestic, highly complex vintage Cabernet Sauvignon from Leberl and a brace of extraordinary wines from winemaker, Paul Achs: a rich and detailed Chardonnay, and a delicate-yet-refined Pinot Noir Reserve.

And yet, the joy here lies in the entire European wine dialogue. Champagne, deep-hued Bordeaux, Sauternes, Spanish Tempranillo and Portuguese Tinto are not parachuted in as trophy bottles but woven into the overall narrative. A glass of Billecart-Salmon Brut Réserve, tasted at 3,000 metres, becomes something subtly different: brighter, more citrus-driven, its well-structured richness dialled back in favour of precision. A liberal pour of 20-year-old Niepoort Moscatel sweetens things up. There’s a curious phenomenon at play: altitude seems to soften the perception of carbonation while amplifying freshness and zest. It’s not just a talking point; it’s a sensory recalibration.

That idea, wine behaving differently in extremis - is at the heart of the event’s appeal. It invites you to reconsider bottles you thought you knew. A Chardonnay, all sun-warmed fruit and buttery richness at sea level, tightens its frame here, the oak stepping back to reveal a more citrus-led profile. A classic Bordeaux gains a certain linearity, its tannins feeling more structural than standoffish. For the enthusiast, it’s a masterclass without the classroom. Of course, no serious wine gathering exists in isolation from food, and this is where Wein am Berg truly flexes.

Alongside the traditional and simple raclette: stringy, molten hot and utterly delightful in the alpine air, the culinary line-up reads like a who’s who of contemporary gastronomy. Among them, is Andy Beynon of Behind - his Michelin-starred, counter-dining concept in Hackney, London - brings a deft, seafood-led sensibility that feels almost rebellious this far from the coast. His dishes, precise and quietly inventive, act as both foil and amplifier to the wines, proving that pairing is as much about contrast as it is about harmony.

Elsewhere, international chefs, such as Dennis Ilies & Janina Trogisch from the two-Michelin-starred Tannenhof Hotel in the Tyrol, layer in their own interpretations, creating a rolling feast that moves from rustic alpine comfort to haute cuisine without ever feeling disjointed. It’s indulgent, certainly, but never gratuitous. Each plate feels considered, part of a broader narrative that celebrates provenance and craft.

Hovering above it all, both physically and metaphorically, is the ominous Ice Q, the striking, glass-clad restaurant also owned by Das Central. Perched like a futuristic outpost on the mountain, it’s as much architectural statement as dining destination. Many will recognise it from its cameo in the 2016 James Bond film, Spectre, where, as the fictional Hoffler Klinik, it provided the backdrop for one of the film’s more tense sequences. In reality, the drama here is of a more pleasurable kind: breathtaking, sweeping alpine views paired with plates that marry precision with a sense of place.

Evenings drift into a gentle decadence. Back at Das Central, the atmosphere shifts from the exhilaration of the slopes to something more intimate. Aside nursing the stresses of the slopes in the world class spa facilities, complete with a -100c Cryotherapy treatment room, Producers mingle with guests and there’s a sense of community that transcends the usual transactional nature of tastings. You’re not just sampling; you’re engaging, learning, and occasionally being challenged.

What makes Wein am Berg so compelling is its refusal to be pinned down as a single thing. It’s a skiing trip, yes (though non-skiers are still more than welcome on the piste,) a wine festival, certainly. A gastronomic showcase, without question. But more than that, it’s an exploration of context: how environment shapes perception, how altitude can redraw the map of flavour and how shared experiences deepen appreciation.

After 23 years, one imagines it would be easy for such an event to become formulaic. Instead, it feels vibrant and excitable, anchored by its setting but open to evolution. Perhaps that’s the real secret: the mountain itself. It imposes a certain perspective, a reminder that even the most familiar pleasures can reveal new facets when viewed from a different height.

As you descend for the final time, legs pleasantly tired, palate quietly recalibrated, there’s a lingering sense that you’ve experienced something more than the sum of its parts. Wein am Berg doesn’t just showcase great bottles; it recontextualises them. And in doing so, it offers a rare gift: the chance to taste, quite literally, on a different level.

Bookings are now open for Wein am Berg 2027, (22-25 April) with packages from €2100 for the full event experience. Details available from weinamberg.at

Staying there: Das Central Hotel, Sölden offers double rooms from €250 per person per night Solden-central.com

A new exhibition by London-based design studio Superflux has opened in Vienna’s Welt Museum. The German word for world, 'welt', is used by the institution in the same way that 'World Music' has come to mean a vast genre taking in the Global South while excluding Europe and colonial North America. It’s the same Eurocentric perspective that sees udon noodles and ghee appear in the 'world food' aisle of supermarkets, while spaghetti and maple syrup do not. For Superflux founders Anab Jain and Jon Ardern, whose heritages span India and Britain, it was the perfect ethnographically charged context for their provocative and playful new show.

Step inside Superflux’s ‘The Craftocene’ exhibition in Vienna

Titled 'The Craftocene', the exhibition is split over three rooms, intermingling new installations with historic artefacts from the museum’s collection in a three-dimensional comment on a speculative, post-anthropocene future. The first room houses a vast oak dining table set for a meal seemingly taking place sometime after an apocalyptic social collapse. The mismatched plates have been repaired with kintsugi (Japan’s ‘golden joinery’ technique), while each piece of cutlery is a Frankensteinian amalgamation of found natural objects and broken 21st-century products. An orange shard of plastic from a car indicator housing, for example, is bound to a twig forming a rudimentary knife. The crockery hints at a future in which an ecological good life is remade from the detritus of today.

In the second room, a posse of insectoid gadgets designed to measure weather conditions within the Thames Estuary is huddled. The data the gadgets produce is being fed into an AI language model trained on old books of gnomic Cockney weather aphorisms and spat out as meteorological poetry. If the rise of AI risks separating humans from nature and traditional wisdom, Superflux hopes its installation could subvert that trajectory; using the same software that underpins Claude and ChatGPT to rekindle connections between people, place and folklore.

The final room is most compelling, containing a collection of new sculptures specially made for the exhibition, presented as if in an ethnographic museum of the far future. The conceit is that anthropologists centuries from now might have discovered the remnants of 21st-century consumerism but, ignorant of how we actually live today, have wildly misinterpreted the various artefacts they’ve uncovered. Classic design objects like Wassily armchairs and Nike sneakers have been remade in unfamiliar material palettes and are presented with captions declaring them to be relics of spiritual traditions.

One exhibit is a stack of Alvar Aalto’s iconic three-legged stools, except, on closer inspection, they aren’t a stack at all but a contiguous column hewn from a single piece of timber. It’s as if the notion of industrially producing identical stools doesn't make sense to future anthropologists, so they have wrongly assumed Aalto must have been making a form of symbolic totem pole instead. Elsewhere is a Le Corbusian ‘LC2’ armchair facing a television, but again, something is not quite right with this familiar scene. The chair is made from rusty rebar rather than polished tubular steel. And the television is a blank lump of pigmented concrete, implying that the trillions of hours that humans collectively spend in front of the telly each year might only make sense to a future society when misconstrued as a religious ritual.

'There's been a lot of misinterpretation,' says Claudia Banz, the relatively new director of the Welt Museum, who personally commissioned the show. She tells me that in the past, 'many many many' of the objects in the museum’s collections were misunderstood as Western curators guessed at the use of the various artefacts donated by wealthy Austrian collectors. For Banz, the show is an attempt to stir up debate about anthropological practices. 'Museums have a social responsibility, but there’s not much space for critical discourse exhibitions,' she confesses and tells me she hopes ‘The Craftocene’ can achieve exactly that.

Were the show merely poking fun at contemporary over-consumption it would be an enjoyable but predictable series of one-liners, like Banksy’s 2004 drawing of Christ crucified while laden with Christmas shopping. But the fact that the objects are presented in the heart of one of Europe’s great anthropological museums gives them another layer of provocation. Superflux is not merely critiquing the tropes of capitalism but the entire tradition of Western anthropology too.

'Superflux. The Craftoscene' runs until 16 August 2026, weltmuseumwien.at

Considering the owners of one of Austria’s most prestigious hotels personally greet arrivals and wave off departures at any hour, it comes as little surprise that equal care is given to what surrounds their guests. High in the altitudes of Lech, Hotel Almhof Schneider has presided over the Alpine landscape for almost a century – since 1929, to be precise.

Current fourth-generation owners Gerold and Katia Schneider are no strangers to their family’s drive to preserve the hotel’s heritage while ensuring its future legacy. Their former life leading a small architectural practice between Vienna and Salzburg remains palpable in the way they operate the hotel, guiding sensitive restoration projects and initiatives, including the gallery and exhibition space Kunstraum Zug and the artist’s studio Werkraum Zug.

Beyond its considered permanent art and design collection – which includes (among others) a James Turrell Skyspace, botanical paintings by local artist Paul Renner and a whimsical fireplace by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ducrot – the hotel now introduces a temporary exhibition focused on 20th-century art and furniture, developed in collaboration with Rajan Bijlani.

The British-Indian collector and curator is known for opening the doors of his north London home, once the studio of British ceramicist Emmanuel Cooper, to host intimate showcases that extend the site’s creative spirit. In a similar vein, through ‘Provenance’ at the Almhof Schneider, traditional exhibition parameters are gently dissolved: furniture and objects are distributed throughout the hotel, allowing guests to encounter them naturally.

‘Provenance’ at the Almhof Schneider

The exhibition’s title derives from American artist Amie Siegel’s 2013 film of the same name, which traces the migration of Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh furniture into Western collecting circuits. At its core is a reflection on how objects, ideas and aesthetics travel across continents, cultures and domestic lives, expanding the confines of traditional genres.

In ‘Provenance’, the structural clarity of Swiss-French modernism is reframed through movements of migration. British potter Lucie Rie, for example, who trained in Vienna before relocating to London in 1938, developed a modernist sensibility shaped by the city yet deeply attuned to the natural world. A highlight here is an early teacup and saucer from her Vienna years (c. 1936), underscoring the exhibition’s themes of continuity and rupture.

Across the showcase, Bijlani’s curation centres on objects with what he describes as ‘unusually clear lived histories’, spanning rare early-production pieces by Swiss architect Pierre Jeanneret – conceived for Chandigarh and produced through local craft traditions using solid teak and Indian rosewood – and an early charcoal drawing of a Seated Figure by German-British painter Frank Auerbach, executed in 1951; his rapid, expressive lines then foreshadowing one of the most important art movements of the post-war generation (The School of London).

Much like the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk – the German term for a ‘total work of art’ that synthesises multiple disciplines – ‘Provenance’ brings together diverse artistic lineages, allowing their many origins to converge and shape new dialogues between objects and landscapes, linking the Himalayas to the Alps, Vienna to London, and the origins of modernism to its enduring afterlives.

Looking ahead, the Schneiders will soon unveil Haus W – a sensitively restored 17th-century chalet in nearby Zug, reimagined for year-round stays and conceived as both a home and a platform for artists-in-residence. It will house a Le Corbusier desk – widely believed to be a unique example.

‘Provenance’ at The Almhof Schneider is on until mid-April 2026. The hotel is located at Tannberg 59, 6764 Lech, Austria

High-altitude architecture and infrastructure never happen by accident. A station or shelter carved into or set atop a mountain is built with great cost and intent, not to mention seemingly insurmountable natural obstacles. Planning and transporting materials to a peak are often as impressive as the architecture itself.

Why build high-altitude architecture?

There have always been reasons to build high. Castles sought protection; monasteries, silence; sanatoriums, fresh, crisp air; temples, proximity to the gods. But today’s high-altitude structures exist resoundingly for downtime leisure. Ski resorts and skyways, bivouacs and cabins, few architects can resist designing a refuge 2,500m in the air. The Instagrammability of such buildings is a panoramic calling card for any practice. Little wonder firms like Herzog & de Meuron, Snøhetta and Zaha Hadid Architects – whose Messner Mountain Museum Corones (2015, 2,275m) is an ode in form and function to the fearless mountaineer that bears its name – have built impressive résumés of mountaintop chalets, outposts and viewing docks that are both technically challenging – wind, power, plumbing, provisions – and impossibly comfortable.

The latest news in high-altitude architecture

2026 will see another slate of remarkable high-altitude achievements, many years and even decades in the making. Featured here are a few of our favourites. What has become apparent is that the architectural bar is as high as the foundations on which these structures are built. Put simply, it is becoming increasingly harder to blow people’s minds. Cliffside-hugging capsules like Skylodge Adventure Suites (Peru, 2013, 3,000m) and OFIS Architekti’s 9.7 sq m Winter Cabin (Slovenia, 2015, 2,700m) and bivouacs like LEAPfactory’s Bivacco Gervasutti (Italy, 2011, 2,835m) and Demogo’s Bivouac Fanton (Italy, 2021, 2,600m) leave precious little room for improvement, both imaginary or real. Then again, Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist Flaine ski resort in Haute-Savoie (France, 1969, 1,600m) still solidly holds its own against all its successors. In Breuer’s view, his resort was less a piece of architecture and more of a total work of art.

7 dizzying examples of high-altitude architecture

As materials continue to improve, as well as derring-do, it appears that the age of architecture in unforgiving climates is only getting started.

Titlis Tower, Switzerland

Back in 2017, Herzog & de Meuron was tasked with creating a comprehensive master plan for Switzerland’s popular Mount Titlis summit, including renewing its mountain station from the late 1960s and repurposing a 50m transmission tower from the 1980s. In May 2026, after eight years, the first stage of the architects’ master plan, the transmission tower, opens to the public. Integrated into the tower’s existing steel structure are two intersecting, fully glazed volumes that house a restaurant, a retail shop and a storage space for snow groomers. The tower is connected by an underground tunnel to the new mountain station, which will open in 2029.

Fred Young Submillimetre Telescope (FYST), Chile

Manufactured by CPI Vertex Antennentechnik in Germany and reassembled at 5,600m on the Cerro Chajnantor in Chile's Atacama Desert, the Fred Young Submillimetre Telescope (FYST) is a remarkable feat of design and engineering. To assemble it required crews kitted out with full oxygen support and safety gear to combat both the cold and high UV (roughly four times that of sea level). Remotely operated, the entire structure demanded special reflecting paints, underground cables, double- and triple-paned windows, sealed at altitude, and robust lightning protection. When the five-storey telescope is inaugurated in April 2026, it will be the second-highest astronomical observatory in the world, second only to its nearby neighbour, the University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO). From this ideal position in the thin air, the consortium behind FYST anticipates ‘first light’ (first scientific observation) by the end of 2026.

Digitally Fabricated Bivouac

Where one architect prefers maximum visibility, others seek invisibility. This digitally fabricated bivouac by Carlo Ratti Associati falls into the latter category. A collaboration between the architects and the Salone del Mobile, the bivouac debuts as a temporary pavilion at the 2026 Winter Olympics before being airlifted to a not-yet-disclosed location. What differentiates this bivouac from others is its Saville Row fit; CRA uses 3D scans of surrounding rock formations to design a shell structure that perfectly conforms to the shape of its surroundings. Photovoltaic and air condensation systems promote self-sufficiency, while a large glass wall emits a bright glow in times of emergency or low visibility.

Schilthornbahn 20xx Project, Switzerland

Since 2022, Schilthorn Cableway Ltd (Schilthornbahn AG) has been battling both altitude and elements to revamp its cable car system between Stechelberg and Schilthorn, in Switzerland, a trajectory that ends at the legendary revolving Piz Gloria restaurant of Her Majesty's Secret Service fame (it was Blofeld's mountaintop hideout). The three-stage superloop from Stechelberg village to the summit includes high-speed Funifor systems, the world’s steepest aerial cableway with a 159.4 per cent gradient and new mountain stations along the way by Brügger Architekten. The final piece to the Schilthornbahn 20xx puzzle will be unveiled in spring 2026, when Piz Gloria reveals her brand-new copper façade and outward-extending finger docks.

Cabaña Rumi Ñahui, Peru

Completed in late 2025, this temporary shelter by Peruvian R3 Arquitectos was designed to enable comfortable living in the cold, windswept Andean landscape. The entire structure evokes suspended rocks – from the eastward-facing exterior façade to the kitchen sink inside. As with any structure built at such a height, its beauty has a performative side. Its long orientation optimises solar gain, while its faceted façade offers protection from the wind. The westward-facing reflective glass mirror façade reduces the shelter’s visual impact, but also captures the afternoon sun. This off-grid shelter includes both active and passive systems, such as high thermal mass materials and controlled ventilation, as well as a biodigester for waste management.

Europahütte, Austrian/Italian border

The brief for this compact mountain lodge in the Zillertal Alps by Modus Architects was to complement, not overshadow, the original rifugio built in 1899, and to ‘connect’ the two both aesthetically and structurally, in part to enable a panoramic terrace sheltered from the prevailing winds. Constructed almost entirely of prefabricated cross-laminated timber, both inside and out, it is the façade’s overlapping elongated hexagonal shingles that stand out, with integrated cornices and sills and windows of varying sizes, a welcome display of whimsy at 2,740m. While the new structure inevitably overshadows its mother hütte in terms of space and comfort, the upward-sweeping conical roof of the new lodge, created to maximise solar power, perfectly mirrors the old. Literally straddling Austria and Italy, the architects cleverly delineated the precise points where the border cuts through the hut through floor and ceiling jointing.

Valbione Mountain Stations and Hut, Italy

A popular Italian winter sports destination, the Ponte di Legno region is undergoing a large-scale architectural upgrade with the help of Peter Pichler Architecture. Replacing two ski lifts is a new gondola system that includes three new mountain stations, one of which is integrated into a summit hut. The structures are inspired by and pay homage to regional architecture, deploying transparent, lightweight wooden designs to minimise their visual impact on the surrounding landscape. The Italian firm’s approach to the Angelo summit station/hut is particularly telling – rather than build a hulking landmark visible from miles away, it is integrating the station into the mountain. The alpine hut that sits atop the station features a pitched roof that follows the natural slope of the landscape. With no access roads, all materials must be transported via helicopter and a temporary zip-line system built onsite. The entire project is intended to open in 2027.

The Mandarin Oriental Vienna brings together two worlds – the renowned international brand’s world-class, luxury hospitality, and the Austrian capital’s particular majestic flair – complete with a landmark Secession building, right in the heart of the city. The new, high-end hotel recently opened its doors, situated a stone’s throw from Vienna’s lusciously Gothic St Stephen’s Cathedral. Occupying a generous and handsome former courthouse building originally opened in 1908, the new Mandarin Oriental Vienna has given its historic home a new lease of life through a redesign by interior designers Goddard Littlefair.

The new hotel brings everything the Mandarin Oriental brand is known to stand for: expert, fast and discreet service, timeless luxury and sophisticated design. The Vienna venue consists of 138 rooms, and the interior, both in the private and communal areas, is accentuated by carefully selected art and bespoke furniture, which elevates the whole. Nothing feels generic, and nothing repeats itself from other Mandarin Oriental outposts – apart from the brand's signature fan logo, which has pride of place here in the form of a specially commissioned artwork in the reception area.

Wallpaper* checks in at the Mandarin Oriental, Vienna

What’s on your doorstep?

Set right in the heart of Vienna, the Mandarin Oriental ensures that guests can find the right balance of local buzz and quiet retreat. Located in the heart of the capital, yet on a quiet street on the edge of the historic town and main shopping district, the hotel is a short stroll from many key Vienna monuments and tourist destinations. You can enjoy drinks at the modernist environs of the Loos Bar, go to the nearby State Opera House, or check out the art shows at the Albertina. Meanwhile, no visit to Vienna is complete without paying a visit to the Hofburg Palace, the former main imperial home of Austria’s legendary Habsburg dynasty. Everything is within walking distance and comfortably achieved, even in the freezing Austrian winter.

Who’s behind the design?

The courthouse building that previously occupied the block now housing the Mandarin Oriental Vienna was originally designed by Austrian architect Alfred Keller at the start of the 20th century. Quirky and expressive, yet at the same time box-shaped and affording the grand style typically found in central European capitals, the structure was full of bespoke adornments and personality, responding to the Secession style that was flourishing in Vienna at the time.

London-based interior design studio Goddard Littlefair was employed to not only bring the building to the 21st century and change its use, but also lead a sensitive restoration of many of its listed elements. Studio co-founder Jo Littlefair explains: ‘Historic buildings have a natural pull for us. What excited us most was uncovering the story of the architecture by Alfred Keller and the period it was built in. That narrative became the driving force for the design, even more so than the brand at the outset. The challenge, of course, was finding the right balance: respecting the building’s heritage while allowing it to evolve into something that feels alive and relevant today.’

Co-founder Martin Goddard adds: ‘Working with a landmark like this becomes a journey with the client and in this case, it was a very personal collaboration, driven by shared passion on both sides. The biggest challenge was the physical reality of adapting a building that was never designed to be a hotel. Service routes, back-of-house spaces, circulation, all of those practical elements required careful compromise. You have to work incredibly hard to make it function seamlessly without losing the character of the original architecture. That tension between preservation and transformation is what ultimately makes projects like this so rewarding.’

The room to book

Rooms at the Mandarin Oriental Vienna range from the bright and comfortable superior room to the generous suites, larger than many apartments: a two-bedroom royal suite is also available if you are so inclined. All feature an elegant palette based on muted colours and black and white marbles, with colour accents brought in through the art on display. The furniture is tailor-made to each room, and there is a range of helpful amenities that underscore the prevailing sense of luxury, including yoga mats for exercising and kimono-style robes for lounging.

Littlefair says: ‘We always start by thinking about the people who seek out Mandarin Oriental – they’re true connoisseurs of travel. They understand quality instinctively and are looking for a sense of exploration paired with sophistication. Translating that into design means paying close attention to materiality, craftsmanship and the smallest touchpoints, because that’s where luxury is really felt. Knowing how people live and travel today allows us to design spaces that feel intuitive, generous and deeply comfortable, without ever being ostentatious.’

For a long weekend, book the Deluxe Suite for its finely balanced size (not too big, not too small) and street site views. The bathroom and walk-in wardrobe area flow together seamlessly if all internal doors are open, while smart partitions allow various areas to be sectioned off, for discretion and comfort when needed, making it punch way above its weight.

For Goddard, the Premier Suite is a favourite: ‘It’s the guest room that best captures what we were aiming for, it feels like a Viennese apartment rather than a hotel suite. The layout works beautifully, it’s functional but relaxed, and it has that ‘comfy-cool’ quality where you genuinely feel like you could live there.’

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Housed in the large building’s covered central courtyard and bathed in light from the glass roof above, the Mandarin Oriental Vienna’s food and beverage offering is diverse yet cleverly compact. Sharing the same, large space, the hotel provides four different culinary destinations for its guests - and beyond, as all restaurants are open to external visitors too. Le Sept is the venue’s fine dining experience, located at the far end of the site and can be separated with movable partitions from the rest of the dining hall if required.

The versatile Atelier 7 Brasserie is the flexible all-day dining bistro, with a speciality in seafood; while Atelier 7 The Café and Atelier 7 Izakaya & Bar are the hotel’s café and bar, respectively. Head to the Brasserie for the most delicate scallops or a butter-soft octopus dish (a seafood tower is also on offer, if you’re hungry) – or stay at the cafe for some of the delicious and meticulously designed desserts Vienna is famous for.

Where to switch off

The Mandarin Oriental Vienna’s lower ground is dedicated to health, exercise and relaxation, housing the gym (complete with state-of-the-art Technogym equipment), spa and pool. Beyond the treatment rooms (a muscle recovery massage is a must to shake off that flight), the spa includes a sauna and steam room. Dedicated family hours at the swimming pool ensures the hotel is child friendly and everyone is catered for.

The verdict

There’s not much you might want when staying at the Mandarin Oriental Vienna. Flexible culinary options, beautifully designed, large rooms, relaxation treatments, and a polite and caring staff make up for a winning combination within a quiet corner of the city centre. The architecture elevates the whole, and it’s evident right from your first encounter with the brand at the entrance lobby’s strikingly elaborate glass chandelier (which was inspired by champagne bubbles) and the adjacent reception lounge.

Littlefair says: ‘The reception area is my favourite. It’s the corner hub of the hotel and the point where the visual storytelling really comes together. The level of detail there, particularly the embroidered artwork behind the reception desk, is a quiet acknowledgement of craftsmanship, and it feels incredibly satisfying to see it realised exactly as we imagined.’

Mandarin Oriental, Vienna is located at Riemergasse 7, 1010 Vienna, Austria

Few may be familiar with Villa Beer, an example of the Austrian-Swedish modernist architect Josef Frank's work in Vienna – and even fewer will have visited the home, which was until recently left unoccupied and neglected, known mostly to architecture aficionados through history books and archive photography, its rundown exterior glimpsed at in sadness by the select few Viennese aware of its existence.

This is about to change. From March 2026, the newly restored villa in the tiny Viennese suburb of Hietzing is opening its doors to the public, following a careful restoration process which brings the rare example of Viennese modernism back into the spotlight. In short: if you savour a modernist architecture visit and look forward to seeing places like Mies van der Rohe's Villa Tugendhat in Brno and Eileen Gray's renovated E-1027 in Côte d'Azur, a tour of this 20th-century gem might be in order.

Step inside Villa Beer in Vienna

Villa Beer was built in 1929/30 to a design by the famous Austrian-born architect, artist and designer Josef Frank, who worked on the project with Oskar Wlach (at the time, the duo was in partnership in the architecture firm Haus & Garten). It was a private commission by the art-loving couple Julius and Margarete Beer and their Viennese Jewish family of four.

The house features many hallmarks typically associated with modernist thinking – clean, white, geometric volumes, large windows and a flexible floor plan with plenty of internal connections and fluid living space. Interestingly, it was built in brick instead of concrete, which was more commonly used in other modernist homes.

Importantly, the layout and forms of Villa Beer highlight Frank's spirit of eschewing modernism's dogma and allowing for flexible usage and daily life to take centre stage – a 'people-friendly' modernism, the architects involved in its restoration underline.

The property is generous, set within a large garden, and spanning a total of some 650 sq m. It comprised several living areas, overlooking ample outdoor space through oversized windows, a music room, a library, four main bedrooms for the family as well as staff quarters (it counts ten bedrooms in total), a modern kitchen, a garage and a number of large sun terraces, which nod to modernism's goal of promoting wellness.

Unfortunately, the Beers ran into financial hardship soon after the house was completed, never living in it for long, and renting it out often to cover their loan instalments. Furthermore, tragically, eventually, most of the family fled Austria with the rise of antisemitism later in the 1930s - as did Frank, who went on to live in Sweden and became a leading figure in the design world through his involvement with the interior design store Svenskt Tenn (Oskar Wlach also left for the US). The couple's daughter, Elisabeth Beer, was murdered in Maly Trostinez in 1941.

From that point, Villa Beer suffered neglect and changing hands, when it was acquired in 2020 by the current owner, Lothar Trierenberg, who founded (and currently is managing director at) the Villa Beer Foundation the following year. Through this vehicle, he embarked on a journey to protect this rare sample of Viennese architectural heritage - kick-starting a restoration project so that the public can rediscover the stories of its architects and owners, and their legacy.

Trierenberg writes in a book published on the occasion of the reopening of Villa Barr: 'When I first entered the house five years ago, having discovered it by a fortunate coincidence, I knew little about its past. Yet the significance of its architecture - and what it reflects - revealed itself immediately. Despite its abandoned condition, with much of its original charm faded, the character and power of the architecture were immediately palpable. One thing was clear: This story and its meaning must not remain private, but rather reach and move as many people as possible.'

Trierenberg worked in collaboration with architect Christian Prasser, the Federal Monuments Office and landscape architects Auböck + Kárász to breathe new life into the tired and much-altered landmark. The main home was brought back to its original state, and two lower levels were discreetly added, adapting the garage into what will be the main entrance and shop, and expanding to include offices, an archive and storage space, alongside a new mini auditorium.

The house had undergone several subdivisions over the years - even split into a two-property arrangement at one time. The restoration work returned the interior to the home's original, single-residence, open-plan layout. While the Beers' loose furniture was long lost, several preserved built-in elements were saved and refreshed - missing parts reconstructed where needed and often in a way that indicates what's old and what's new, to showcase both what the home would have looked like in its freshly-constructed fabric - and what the patina added through the passing of time.

A high standard of craftsmanship and historical accuracy were prioritised, and the team often engaged the project's original contractors for the reconstructions and replacements. As a result, floors, fireplaces, security grilles, the dumbwaiter and radiators were repaired, alongside several windows.

Even the music room was reinstated with a grand piano of the same era, replacing the long-lost Bösendorfer one owned by the Beers, who frequently hosted recitals and musical soirees.

Aiming for the house to become a beacon for culture and learning, Katharina Egghart, the managing director of the Villa Beer Foundation, flags that a diverse programme of activities is currently in the works. This will include anything from guided tours, discussions, music and literary events, to symposia and educational workshops.

The newly renovated top floor (furnished with textiles and furniture designed by Josef Frank for Svenskt Tenn) will be available to even host guests overnight, bookable through the Villa Beer's website, while creative residences and research programmes are also in the house's future. Meanwhile, the main dining room and kitchen can be used to host creative dinner parties.

Trierenberg said: ‘Villa Beer is also intended to become a place of learning and teaching for architecture as well as for the complex history of the interwar period.' Egghart added: 'Even though Villa Beer will be open to the public in future, its character as a residential building will be preserved as far as possible. Visitors should feel like welcome guests.'

You can book your visit to Villa Beer online from February 2026. The home is open for visits from 8 March 2026

Villa Beer, Wenzgasse 12; 1130 Vienna

At Wallpaper*, movement is second nature, and savouring it is an art. Whether on assignment or off-duty, our editorial team is perpetually combing the globe, visiting places that are mind-expanding and spirit-lifting. This year, we paused to gather the places that truly stayed with us. Consider this selection of travel highlights, handpicked by our staff, as a starting point for the year ahead, compiled to spark curiosity and fuel your future travel plans.

As such, follow the sun to Mexico, Greece, Spain and Italy, or embrace the stark beauty of Finland and Iceland. Looking for adventure? Uzbekistan, Egypt and Kenya deliver. For a spiritual reset, Japan and South Korea offer ritual and depth. From European mainstays such as Vienna and Lisbon to American icons including Miami and Joshua Tree, let’s get globetrotting.

Amanohashidate, Japan

‘Last April, adding a few days to a long-haul work trip felt like the responsible thing to do, particularly when long-haul now extends to a 16-hour dog-leg to Osaka via Doha, which is how I came to visit one of Japan’s most revered destinations, Amanohashidate, site of a 3.6km sidebar known as ‘the staircase to heaven’ that cuts across Miayazu Bay in Kyoto prefecture. Amanohashidate itself is a quiet village with a national landmark at its heart and a well-run ryokan (Monjusou) to relax in, but the surrounding area is blessed with no less significant points of interest. Ine is a ‘floating village’ of 230 fishing cottages, protected as a heritage site, that offers good walking with splendid sea views and great coffee in one of its repurposed properties. Sometimes all you need is sea air, the odd stroll and the chance to indulge in something as silly as matanozoki, or peering between your legs atop Kasamatsu Park, at which point the now-inverted sandbar appears as a bridge across the sky.’

– Bill Prince, editor-in-chief

Athens, Greece

‘This past autumn, I celebrated a milestone birthday in Athens. The city feels as though it was shaped by accumulation rather than careful urban planning, its layers of typeface, texture and attitude stacked across eras, politics and glitzy inconsistencies. Visually, Athens is unrelenting: everything speaks loudly and constantly, and nothing is treated as too precious. Even the Acropolis feels unresolved, its original fragments scattered between the exquisitely built Acropolis Museum and far beyond Greece’s borders. I enjoyed long lunches with generous pours of Assyrtiko from aluminium jugs, and late nights drifting into hot spots like SMUT, where Athens’ spontaneity really kicks in. I chose Athens as my favourite of the year because it thrives in chaos, offering moments of beauty and excitement, and rewarding those who stay longer, pay attention and arrive hungry.’

– Gabriel Annouka, senior designer

Brittany, France

‘On something of a nostalgia trip to the south coast of Brittany, France – the destination of my first-ever trip abroad – now with my own teenagers in tow, I was relieved to find it a still-lovely, laidback and low-key escape with none of the hussle or hassle a beach break during the summer holidays can entail. The sea was utterly clear – too freezing for me, even in July, for more than one cold plunge, but perfect for kayaking or admiring endlessly from coastal walking paths. Bike hire in this cycling-obsessed nation was ubiquitous and the paths plentiful and well sign-posted; they even continued across estuaries, courtesy of short ferry hops on which bikes were not just bienvenue but (bafflingly for a Brit used to transport-network shortfalls) positively encouraged. And a day’s hire extended through to the evening, allowing ample time for a thoroughly civilised French lunch break en route with (savoury) galettes and (sweet) crêpes galore. Pancakes for all courses is a concept close to my heart.’

– Bridget Downing, executive editor

Cairo, Egypt

‘In November, I visited Cairo and spent a few warm, autumnal days watching the light shift over the Art D’Égypte installations, set in the sand beneath the pyramids of Giza. I was particularly drawn to SolidNature and Studio PROBA’s organically shaped, naturally coloured stone sculptures. Seeing them positioned against the pyramids was both wondrous and surreal: two forms of stone, prehistoric in material yet composed millennia apart, held in quiet dialogue with one another. The experience was utterly mesmerising, leaving me feeling incredibly small in the face of such magnificence and scale. Other highlights across the city included losing track of time in the newly opened Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) and wandering through the calming gardens of Adam Henein’s gallery house.’

– Olly Mason, head of interiors

Évora, Portugal

‘When my sister moved to Lisbon in 2024, I dreamily imagined endless weekends of wandering, but life got in the way and it never quite happened; until this summer, when we managed to bring both our families together for ten scorching days in Alentejo, a more off-the-beaten-path part of Portugal, around 90 minutes east of Lisbon. We stayed in gloriously serene countryside, awash with olive groves and vineyards, occasionally popping into the medieval, walled UNESCO city of Évora for ice cream (Pezagno, delicious!). On one visit, we explored the Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones), a 16th-century chapel within the Church of St Francis, built by Franciscan monks as a memento mori to inspire reflection on the transience of life. Its walls and columns are clad with thousands of strikingly arranged human skulls and bones, previously buried in Évora’s medieval cemeteries. Above the door, an inscription reads: “We bones are here, waiting for yours.” At the entrance to this macabre chapel is a simple modern mural by Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira – a counterpoint to its meditation on mortality.’

– Anne Soward, production editor

Helsinki, Finland

‘While others escaped to hotter climes, last February, I decided to embrace the cold and wintry feel of Europe and headed further north, to Helsinki. It was one of the best travel decisions I ever made. The day was short, but the city was fun, and the cultural offerings were plentiful and welcoming. Helsinki was frozen – not that you would be bothered with the right clothes and shoes, especially in the city centre, where pavements are heated so that the snow doesn’t build up. A short ferry ride, breaking through the icy waters, took me to the magical Suomenlinna sea fortress - thank you, Laura Iloniemi, for the tip! I also explored the numerous art offerings the city has to offer, from the Amos Rex museum to the Temppeliaukio church of the rock. I stayed at a timber-framed hotel by the water, Solo Sokos Pier 4, paid a visit to the renovated Finlandia Hall, and enjoyed sticky Korvapuusti (Finnish cinnamon rolls) and warm and creamy salmon soup. As travel reviews often conclude, “would definitely recommend.”’

– Ellie Stathaki, architecture and environment director

Hydra, Greece

‘This year I’ve been lucky to visit great European capitals including Vienna, Paris and Athens, but somehow it’s my day on the small Greek island of Hydra that was most memorable. Big cities are filled with great things to do and see, but Hydra offers an escape from it all, with no cars, no museums, and practically no phone reception. And yet it still has everything you might possibly need on a nice autumn day: a lunch at a taverna followed by a dip in the sea, and a walk along the coastal path, suspended between the blue sky and the Mediterranean.’

– Léa Teuscher, sub-editor

Joshua Tree, USA

‘In May, I made the three-hour journey from Los Angeles into the Mojave Desert to Joshua Tree. It had long been on my list to visit, likely prompted by endless interviews with musicians who enthused about the desert’s mystical energy. There are no shortage of incredible architectural stays to book in the area, but after much deliberation, I settled on this geodesic dome, far enough away from civilisation to get the full experience (the drive back from dinner in the pitch black was a little hairy) but just twenty minutes from Joshua Tree National Park and the must-sees of the Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms. I loved every single thing about this trip. From the weird roadside stops along the route – a desert crochet museum? A shrine to fifties hairdressing? A park filled with many, many statues of Christ? – to dinner at The Copper Room, drinks at Mas o Menos and obligatory live music at Pioneertown institution, Pappy & Harriet’s (the nearby Red Dog Saloon was a little quieter when Pappy’s is packed). I can’t wait to return.’

– Charlotte Gunn, director of digital content

Kyoto, Japan

‘I loved visiting Kyoto this year, and discovering its rich history, gorgeous food and beautiful surroundings. The highlight, though, was being able to get to know some of the locals, who were as generous with their time as they are cultured, intelligent, and extremely kind.’

– Hannah Silver, art, culture, watches and jewellery editor

Lake Como, Italy

‘Until last year, I had never been to Italy; now, I can say I’ve been three times. A run of good fortune took me to Milan for Salone de Mobile, and Venice for an immersive exhibition hosted by Golden Goose. In addition, to mark the beginning of the summer season, I was invited to Lake Como to stay at Il Sereno’s new listening suite, designed by Patricia Urquiola. The lake in the foothills of the Alps took my breath away. It was scenery I had not seen before, and I was captivated by its beauty. There was an effortless air of Old Hollywood glamour and relaxed sophistication coupled with the calming nature of the lake, which makes the location entirely unique. I cannot wait to go back.’

– Tianna Williams, staff writer

Menorca, Spain

‘The Menorca Experimental hotel had been on my bucket list for years, and I finally made it there for a short break in September. Designed by Dorothée Meilichzon, the interiors strike a balance between playful colour and subtle Art Deco references, incorporating local designers and materials. It felt considered yet relaxed. The weather was still warm enough for sea swims in some of the clearest water I’ve seen in Europe, and it was easy to find quieter spots that felt untouched. There’s a quiet, understated rhythm to the island that encourages you to slow down, making it a perfect mid-season reset.’

– Cindy Parthonnaud, acting photography editor

Mérida, Mexico

‘I spent 10 days in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula this summer and enjoyed soaking up Mérida’s rich history, intense summer heat and xtabentún, the local firewater. The city is about 30 miles inland, meaning those craving a swim-up bar or large beach resort won’t find it here. Instead, they’ll discover a mix of unhurried streets, bustling markets, pretty boutiques and innovative cuisine that spotlights traditional Yucatec cooking. My husband and I checked in at Hotel Cigno, an elegant boutique property located in Mérida’s historic heart, before hiring a local guide to take us to Uxmal, one of the Mayan world’s most important sites, and an azure blue cenote, a naturally occurring limestone sinkhole that peppers the area. There was still an opportunity to hit the beach, though: an hour-ride taxi will take you straight to the coast, where you can take in tranquil waters, white sand beaches, bright-pink salt lakes and – my favourite – droves of flamingos.’

– Anna Fixsen, U.S. editor

Miami, USA

‘I came to Miami for the Grand Prix – where Lego had built ten fully drivable cars – but stayed for the art deco architecture, palm-lined boulevards and viscerally cinematic sunsets. Miami’s expansion in the 1920s and 30s left it with a remarkable concentration of art deco buildings, which I completely fell in love with. A stroll down Ocean Drive – one of the finest showcases of the style – took me hours, slowed by pastel façades and kitsch vintage cars that demanded to be photographed. Little Havana, shaped by Cuban émigrés after the 1959 revolution, is home to cigar shops, graffiti tributes to Celia Cruz and Old’s Havana Cuban Bar & Cocina, which, with its yellow walls and mojito production line, is an institution. So, too, is Delilah – swathed in pink velvet and favoured by A-listers – though in an entirely different vein. Miami is a place I’d return to in a heartbeat.’

– Anna Solomon, digital writer

Nesjavellir, Iceland

‘My yearly travel mainly comprises the movement between Milan, Paris and New York for fashion week (and the freneticism and overstimulation these trips bring), so when I’m not working I seem to be attracted towards the vast and the desolate – Lanzarote has become my go-to escape, and this spring I loved losing myself in its strange, moonlike landscapes once again. Though it was another otherworldly (and volcanic) island that was my favourite trip of 2025: Iceland, which I visited with 66 North last month (the outerwear brand was founded on the island a century ago). I have been a couple of times before, though each time it is surprising in its vastness and scale: speeding across the snow-covered mountain ridge Thórsmörk – named after the Norse god Thor – on off-roading buggies was a truly cinematic experience (and the perfect release). We spent the second night at the Ion Adventure Hotel, a Brutalist box on stilts that looks out over the geothermal fields of Nesjavellir – in the silence, it was my best night’s sleep of the year.’

– Jack Moss, fashion and beauty features director

Seoul, South Korea

‘About two hours from Seoul, in the mountains of Wonju, Museum SAN (Space Art Nature) heralds an architectural feat by Tadao Ando: a 25-metre-wide subterranean dome beneath the museum’s flower garden, topped with an oculus rising more than seven metres high. Titled Ground, it was commissioned to accompany Antony Gormley’s exhibition Drawing on Space.’

– Jason Hughes, creative director

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

‘I spend much of my year bouncing around beautiful design-led hotels. But at least once a year, I make it my mission to step out of this bubble as a reminder of why I love to travel in the first place. And this year, my trip to Uzbekistan was a welcome reset. It’s not a destination known for luxury, but with tourism on the rise, you can feel the energy in Tashkent’s creative pockets and across Samarkand and Bukhara, which just hosted its inaugural biennale. From the staggering detail of the Islamic architecture to the small, genuinely local boutique hotels, there’s an incredible history and a rawness that was not just compelling, but a reminder that stepping away from the familiar is not just refreshing, but important to keep your curiosity alive.’

– Lauren Ho, travel director

Tokyo, Japan

‘Tokyo had been calling for some time, and this October I was finally able to answer. Japan’s capital is an urban sprawl of ritual, contrast, beauty and tradition, where even the smallest details feel deliberate and meaningful. It was my first visit, and I tried to stay fully present, absorbing as much of the city’s energy as possible; yet I still feel I barely scratched the surface. There are countless moments I hold onto, but one stands out: waking to a bright, clear morning and, from my hotel room on the 34th floor of Fairmont Tokyo, spotting Mount Fuji in the distance. It appeared as a majestic presence on the horizon, wishing the city a good day.’

– Sofia de la Cruz, travel editor

Vienna, Austria

‘Vienna is a really great city for a short getaway, especially for those interested in design. The city is filled with hidden gems, such as the interiors and ambience of Café Prückel, located just across the street from the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK). Be sure to check out the numerous storefronts designed by Hans Hollein throughout the city, including the iconic façade of the Retti candle shop. One of the highlights for me was the Roman Catholic church depicted above, built in the late 1970s by architect Viktor Hufnagl.’

– Sebastian Jordahn, head of video

Watamu, Kenya

‘Earlier this year, I travelled to Kenya and spent time in Watamu, a coastal town known for stunning white-sand beaches, coral reefs, mangroves and a large marine life. I was there for a private yoga retreat with a yoga company called Pana and stayed in a one-of-a-kind treehouse, Watamu Tree House, near Watamu Beach. Our treehouse retreat, built by the family who runs it, rises through the landscape, from the ground to the top floor, with shimmering coloured glass mosaics. Each day in Watamu began with yoga in the studio at the top of the building, which offered quiet and perspective. Practising yoga above the ground, with the sea nearby and trees in the distance, felt grounding. Fresh vegetarian meals formed the core of each day, as each meal came with coconut water and juices made fresh each morning.’

– Jamilah Rose-Roberts, social media editor

‘Astrotourism’ refers to traveling to destinations which boast the most bewitching night skies in the world. These spots, often located in Dark Sky Reserves, are removed from civilisation and the accompanying light pollution, allowing for awe-inducing activities like stargazing, aurora viewing and eclipse chasing. In addition to becoming one with the heavens, astrotourism allows travellers to discover the most beautiful, far-flung spots on the planet.

There's no better time for astrotourism. Last year saw an uptick in Northern Lights sightings and there's even more in store in 2025 via astronomical alignments known as 'planetary parades.' According to Skyscanner, this year has seen a 53 per cent increase in travellers seeking to see the Northern Lights, with 28 per cent planning to visit Dark Sky Reserves.

A cohort of hotels, resorts and lodges have answered the call, all optimally positioned to reveal meteor showers including the Lyrids, Eta Aquariids, Perseids, Orionids and Geminids throughout the year; Saturn’s rings this spring; and the supermoon trifecta this autumn.

Want to take it all in? These seven astrotourism destinations will leave you starry-eyed.

Portugal: São Lourenço do Barrocal

Nestled among meadows, olive groves and vineyards, this Portuguese estate has been in the same family for 200 years. Eighth-generation owner, José Antonio, spent 14 years refurbishing the property; it is now sleek and elegant while retaining its old-world soul. The hotel sits within Portugal’s 3,000 square-kilometre Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve; here, you can visit the official observatory and view nebulae, galaxies, Saturn and the Moon, or take a private astronomy lesson in the hotel garden.

barrocal.pt

USA: Primland, Auberge Resorts Collection

There are few places in the world where you can get closer to nature than Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, the home of the Primland Resort, which sits on a private 12,000-acre mountain estate. The lodge and its cottages is surrounded by winding trails and trout-filled streams, as well as an unusually clear sky which can be viewed in its splendour from the property’s very own observatory. As darkness cloaks Primland Resort, guests marvel at stars, planets, nebulae and other celestial phenomena year-round.

aubergeresorts.com

Chile: Our Habitas Atacama

Deserts are some of the most sparsely-populated places on the planet, and the best places to stargaze. Our Habitas Atacama is situated in Chile’s Atacama Desert, which not only boasts a low population density, but the convergence of a number of other factors that makes it optimal: high altitude, dry climate, stable air and clear skies almost year-round. The hotel has just introduced a five-night stargazing package, ‘Explorer’s Delight’, designed to coincide with 2025’s celestial events, which includes discovering constellations, planets and the Milky Way with an in-house astronomer.

ourhabitas.com

Wales: Celestia

At Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales the mountains seem to climb to meet the stars, and the Milky Way can clearly be seen crossing the skies on moonless nights. The park became a Dark Sky Reserve in 2012, and local accommodation provides plenty of ‘stay-and-gaze’ options such as the wonderfully isolated Celestia. This converted farmhouse and barn is situated in a private clearing reached via waterfall-filled valleys and tangled woodland.

uniquehomestays.com

Saudi Arabia: Banyan Tree AlUla

There are few things more surreal than gazing at the cosmos from the already-Martian landscape of the Ashar Valley in Saudi Arabia. Banyan Tree AlUla is located far from the city lights within a vast open desert, which is conducive to some of the world’s most enviable dark skies. Here, tented villas blend seamlessly with the sweeping sands, sandstone cliffs and rugged rock formations, and a hotel astronomer guides guests through the constellations aided by state-of-the-art telescopes.

banyantree.com

Australia: Longitude 131°

The remote nature of the Australian outback makes for spectacular stargazing, but luxury camp Longitude 131° is particularly privileged, with its low humidity and minimal artificial light. At its alfresco dining venue, Table 131°, guides share Aboriginal stories of the constellations under the glittering canopy, and the lodge’s resident astronomer decodes the southern night sky. This truly is Australia’s heartland, with 16 tented pavilions dotted among rust-red dunes with views to Uluru rock.

longitude131.com.au

Namibia: &Beyond Sossusvlei Desert Lodge

The NamibRand Dark Skies Reserve, 140km from the nearest town, enjoys Gold Tier status, meaning that it is one of the darkest places in the world. &Beyond Sossusvlei, which neighbours the reserve, is home to its own observatory and resident astronomers who, every evening, invite guests to use the Celestron telescope to unlock the wonders of the universe. The lodge is situated on its own 12,715-hectare reserve—an ocean of dunes, rocky outcrops and gravel plains under a perfectly clear sky.

andbeyond.com

Ski season is here again, and it’s looking better than ever. The arrival of fresh snow has also brought with it the arrival of another cool new alpine retreat, which joins the recent wave of design-led properties now dotting the snowy landscapes of Europe. Here’s the Wallpaper* edit of where to ski in style.

The best alpine retreats in Europe

Le Coucou Méribel in France

The traditional wooden chalet exterior of Le Coucou blends in seamlessly with the mountainous backdrop of Méribel. Inside, French designer Pierre Yovanovitch has put a contemporary riff on the traditional Alpine style. Classic wood-panelled rooms are jazzed up with a modern palette of salmon pinks and pops of electric blue, polka dot carpets and winter white bouclé furnishings. Guests can also find a small collection of artwork dotted throughout the property, including a fresco of owls painted on the lobby ceiling by Matthieu Cossé, a stone sculpture by Ugo Rondinone from the owners’ personal collection, and hand-crafted rock engravings by Gaultier Rimbault-Joffard. Le Coucou’s location in the heart of the Three Valleys, the largest ski area in the world, offers a ton of options for snowy adventures; that is if you can drag yourself away from the spa with its two mountain-view pools and Tata Harper treatments.

Le Coucou Méribel is located at 464 route du Belvédère, 73550 Les Allues Méribel, France, lecoucoumeribel.com

The Cōmodo in Bad Gastein, Austria

Sitting high up in the spa town of Bad Gastein, The Cōmodo is housed in a historic 1881 property which has been given a new midcentury look by designers Barbara Elwardt and Piotr Wisniewski. The duo drew inspiration from 1960s modernism and Vienna’s cafe culture to create a rich palette of wine, bottle green, and retro browns complemented by layers of oak, pine and terrazzo flooring. The richly textured rooms feature a mix of organic materials, from custom wallpapers and woollen throws to vintage chairs, leather bed benches and curved tactile headboards. The surrounding valley offers plenty of ski runs whilst back at the hotel, the spa rejuvenates with treatments based around Gastein’s mineral-rich thermal waters.

The Cōmodo is located at Kaiserhofstraße 18, 5640 Bad Gastein, Austria, thecomodo.com

Experimental Chalet Val d’Isère in France

After launching its first ski hotel in Switzerland, the French Experimental Group is back on home soil with its soon-to-open second Alpine address in Val d’Isère. The trio behind the group has handed the keys once again to long-time collaborator Dorothée Meilichzon, who has put a fun twist on traditional Alpine design – think glossy ceilings in classic chalet shades of burgundy and green, fabric headboards with oversized cross stitching, and an interesting mix of wooden textures and shades in the public spaces. By day, guests have access to various ski slopes including cross-country and off-piste, and by night, the hotel’s three restaurants are complemented by the brand’s signature Experimental Cocktail Club bar for après-ski drinks.

Experimental Chalet Val d’Isère is located at rue de la Poste, 73150 Val-d’Isère, France, experimentalchaletvaldisere.com

Forestis Dolomites in Italy

Forestis Dolomites owners Stefan Hinteregger and Teresa Unterthiner tapped South Tyrolean architect Armin Sader to imagine the minimalist mountain retreat in a way that encourages guests to reconnect with nature. Sadar put Dolomite stone at the centre of the Forestis style, along with spruce wood furnishings crafted bespoke by a local carpenter. Smooth curved lines in the spa suites make a soothing space for relaxation whilst the textured walls and a heavy wooden tasting table in the wine cellar create a more rustic atmosphere that nods to the local terroir. In contrast, blonde wood brings lightness to the Garden Restaurant, complemented by natural fabrics from a weaving mill in Trentino and sweeping mountain views.

Forestis Dolomites is located at Palmschoß 22, 39042 Brixen, Dolomites, Italy, forestis.it

Hotel de Len in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

With the name ‘de len’ meaning ‘of wood’ in Ladin – a Romance language mainly spoken in the Northern Italian Dolomites by the Ladin people – it’s no surprise that Hotel de Len comes dressed from head to toe in layers of Alpine wood. Italian design team Gris+Dainese used locally sourced timber to root the hotel in the surrounding area, starting with the panels on the striking main façade. Inside, the 22 pared-back rooms have been lined with reclaimed fir and Swiss pine, both chosen not only for their style but also their natural perfume and sleep-enhancing properties. For guests who need more than just an Alpine scent to drift off, a panoramic glass-fronted spa sits on the top floor of the hotel with steam baths, salt saunas, and an outdoor rooftop Jacuzzi.

Hotel de Len is located at Via Cesare Battisti, 66, 32043 Cortina d’Ampezzo (BL), Italy, hoteldelen.it

Six Senses Crans-Montana in Switzerland

The sophisticated design of Six Senses Crans-Montana warmly welcomes guests in from the cold whilst still keeping them connected with nature. In the 78 guestrooms and suites, French interior designers AW2 put a contemporary spin on traditional cosy Swiss cabins and married together rough timber planks and soft leather and wool with modern stone-coloured wall render whilst, in the bathrooms, real stone walls were chosen as a nod to the surrounding mountainside. There’s direct ski-in and ski-out access to the Chetzeron red slope and when you’re done, refuel with piste-side dining at the hotel’s two restaurants. But in true Six Senses style the 2000 square metre spa is the heart of the hotel, where treatment rooms are imagined as mountain cabins with timber panelled walls placed around the Alpine Garden, fully landscaped with native trees and plants.

Six Senses Crans-Montana is located at Route des Téléphériques 60, 3963 Crans-Montana, Valais, Switzerland, sixsenses.com

Vienna, renowned as the birthplace of numerous artistic and intellectual movements, hosts one of the most dynamic design festivals in the world, characterised by an ever-roving epicentre – Vienna Design Week’s headquarters. ‘We're a nomadic festival, so we travel through the city,’ explains the annual spectacle’s director, Gabriel Roland during this year's event (20 – 29 September 2024). Traditionally, Vienna Design Week has established its headquarters in various pre-existing buildings across the city. However, 2024 marks a pivotal moment in the festival's nearly two-decade history, as it temporarily inhabits a newly constructed project for the first time.

Vienna Design Week 2024 highlights

As well as hosting the festival’s dedicated team throughout the event, the headquarters also serves as the backdrop for several of Vienna Design Week’s engaging exhibitions, workshops, and installations, including ‘Design Revolution Now! and A Designer’s Toolbox for Revolution’. Developed by a temporary artist collective from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the project challenges traditional design narratives while presenting a fresh definition of the discipline. Serving as both a mock-up and a critique, the exhibition – built entirely from re-used cardboard – emphasises the importance of discourse in design evolution and marks its public debut during this year’s festival.

It is worth noting that Vienna Design Week’s rich programme is not confined to its headquarters; it extends across the city, showcasing a diverse range of innovative designs. Among the highlights, the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) stands out with two major exhibitions. The first, AUT NOW: 100 × Austrian Design for the 21st Century’ showcases Austrian design innovations from the year 2000 to 2025, in 25 categories. From furniture and lighting to conceptual solutions addressing mobility and health, the exhibition emphasises the ingenuity and versatility of Austrian design. Visitors are invited to explore how these objects intertwine poetry with purpose. The second exhibition, ‘Elements: Adam Štěch’s Perspective on Architectural Details’, features almost 3,000 modernist architectural details compiled by Prague-based historian Adam Štěch. Each piece, meticulously documented, highlights the rich architectural heritage of the 20th century. Through an engaging mobile display, Štěch’s work, in collaboration with Matěj Činčera and Jan Kloss, guides the viewer as they embark on a visual journey of design elements that have shaped modern interiors.

Yet another standout installation inhabiting the festival’s headquarters is ‘Exquisite Corpse’, a collaborative experiment in the tradition of French surrealism. Architects Eldine Heep and Barbara Gollackner, based in Vienna and Salzburg respectively, engage in a playful process of co-creation, with each designer building upon the other’s work without prior discussion. Like a modern game of artistic ‘tag’, objects are sent back and forth between the two, who each add their unique interpretations to the evolving design. Their pieces, which cannot be fully attributed to one designer alone, embody a unique synergy of styles, representing the confluence of proximity and distance.

Heep and Gollackner’s work is as much about creative conversation as it is about the final product – a living embodiment of the festival’s ethos of collaboration. This ongoing project, bridging geographic and creative gaps is reminiscent of other design partnerships in history, like the transcontinental collaboration between Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann and Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which similarly thrived despite the physical distance between them.

Vienna Design Week has long embraced its identity as a festival of movement – both in the literal sense, with the annual relocation of its headquarters, and in a metaphorical sense, as it pushes the boundaries of design itself. At the heart of its philosophy is the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk – the 'total work of art'. This idea, originating in 19th-century utopian visions of uniting all the arts, finds new expression in the festival. The lack of a permanent home could easily be seen as a disadvantage, but for Vienna Design Week, it’s a defining strength. The festival's transitory nature allows it to weave its way into different corners of the city, constantly reinventing itself with each passing year.

When asked if a fixed, permanent – read bricks and mortar – headquarters could ever be on the cards, Roland remains open but sceptical. 'At the moment, I can't imagine Vienna Design Week becoming sedentary.' This openness to change, alongside the festival’s refusal to be confined by physical limitations, ensures that the event will continue its evolution, offering a platform for experimental, forward-thinking design for years to come. As it looks to the future, its nomadic spirit remains at the core of its identity. For now, at least, Vienna Design Week remains a festival forever in flux.

Vienna Design Week 2024 ran 20 – 29 September, viennadesignweek.at

Ensconced by the alpine scenery surrounding Zugspitze mountain is Eriro, a new pared-back Austrian hideaway only accessible via cable car. Silky fields grazed by cows and pine forests with an arresting mountain backdrop welcome the guests who have ascended 1,500 m to reach the escape – a view akin to a sublime painting. Wollen socks are gifted on arrival: an invitation to treat this hotel like home.

Tour Eriro, a mountain retreat in Austria

Rising from the foundations of an inn that dates back to 1936, Eriro’s footprint was shaped by strict planning regulations. Architect Martin Gruber collaborated with hoteliers Amelie and Dominik Posch and Christina and Martin Spielmann to elevate the existing layout with an understated but contemporary brief. Honouring its modest origins, the hotel is composed primarily of wood, much of which was harvested from the nearby forests and reclaimed from old barns, brought to fruition by timber construction expert Andreas Mader.

As the existing floor plan permitted just nine suites, each one feels generously proportioned. A muted theme blends layered textiles in earthy colours that mirror the landscape, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows. While the penthouse stands out with its pitched ceiling, open fireplace, dual terraces and private sauna, all of the other suites include a freestanding bath carved entirely from a single chunk of pine and mountain views.

Throughout the property, interiors bathe in the shifting alpine light. Thick panels of sheep’s wool line the walls, pressed up against raw stone and rustic clay-effect surfaces. Rough wood cladding adds a tactile dimension to the simplicity. A strong sense of place is tangible, with the majority of the furniture custom-made, and each weighty door took a day and a half to craft.

Aside from organically shaped ceramics, art is minimal. Figurative sculptures appear discreetly, whittled by the architect himself using wood salvaged from the ruins of a former workshop destroyed in a fire. It’s a nod to the owners’ passion for sustainable practices and creatively repurposing scrap materials.

Food is no exception to this rule. Chef David Franken developed a culinary concept that embraces locally-grown ingredients, alongside a rigorous zero-waste policy. This presents a worthy challenge, but a peek inside the larder reveals a wealth of pickled goods, from pork to pinecones, meticulously labelled and tucked away for winter. Plants and mushrooms are foraged, vegetables come from nearby farms, and game meat is purchased from a local hunter.

Nature courses through the veins of this subtle mountain sanctuary. Guided walks inspire barefoot wandering in dappled meadows and wild swimming in aquamarine lakes. Outdoorsy guests are never short of a fix, be it hiking, biking, climbing or skiing in season. And when the weather folds in, there’s nowhere more compelling to shelter than Eriro’s spa, with two saunas and a collection of warm shallow meditation pools, ideal for watching the wind chase shadows across the pastures. Yoga and sound baths are on offer, as well as massages using oils infused with regional herbs like nettle, yarrow and arnica. Guests are coaxed into putting down their phones and picking up a paintbrush, throwing pottery or losing themselves in whittling.

It feels natural to ease into this luxurious take on authentic Tyrolean living and surrender to the pulse of the seasons. One moment, the mountains appear cinematically, all severe edges in a deluge of harsh sunlight. Then all of a sudden, they’re barely an ink sketch masked in mist. Rooted in an ever-changing panorama with only the lull of cow bells to diffuse the silence, Eriro is a place to be seduced into stillness.

Eriro is located at Ehrwalder Alm 4, 6632 Ehrwald, Austria, eriro.at

Landstrasse, Vienna’s alluringly out-of-the-way third district, has a regal past, most notably defined by the presence of the Belvedere, the sprawling, must-see Baroque complex of museums and gardens. Not far from it is the Imperial Riding School, another cultural marvel.

Imperial Riding School, Vienna

Born as a palace in 1727, the building served as a military equestrian school during Emperor Franz Joseph I’s reign. Later, it became one of the city’s largest movie theatres and also functioned as a garage for postal buses before its life as a hotel. Now, the 342-room property, part of Marriott International’s Autograph Collection, has been revitalised by London and Porto-based interior design studio Goddard Littlefair, in collaboration with local firms BWM Designers & Architects and Lindle+Bukor.

‘Much was discovered during the research phase of Imperial Riding School. Everyone thinks of horses, but that’s not necessarily the whole story,’ explains Goddard Littlefair’s director and co-founder Martin Goddard. ‘We found those things that were a bit hidden and tapped into them, particularly the cinematic element.’

In its previous iteration, the hotel had been attracting a steady stream of conferencegoers and tour groups, but the team were keen to push it in a bolder direction. The formerly compartmentalised ground level, for instance, needed a fresh approach. ‘We wanted to open the whole space up,’ says Goddard. ‘We moved the reception from the front to the back so that everything beyond it could be about the guestrooms.’

Before giving way to those private lairs, the lobby, with its wood flooring that evokes the site’s past as a stable, invites both contemplation and community. Ample seating areas, including one backdropped by an antique Franz Joseph sign salvaged from a staircase, allow guests to savour the monumental original arches and columns juxtaposed with bespoke lighting fixtures, crafted from metal, glass, and horsehair, and the ring-shaped sculpture of Goddard Littlefair’s own design that acts as ‘a visual clue pointing you toward reception’, as Goddard puts it.

Off the lobby are The Farrier bar and Elstar, the restaurant named after an apple variety widely grown in Europe, an homage to the hotel’s orchard roots that's reinforced with soft red and green hues.

While The Farrier is distinguished by swoops of metal, Elstar is graced with decorative Secessionist-style mirrored panels and flows into a gorgeous private garden. The latter's sense of serenity is matched only in the wellness area, complete with pool and tiled seating alcoves.

Guestrooms – reached by corridors covered in carpets that depict hoof marks based on the gallop size and gait of the horse owned by Empress Elisabeth ‘Sisi’ of Austria – abound with subtle equestrian references.

Elegant cocktail cabinets and sofas are balanced with lighting bolstered by bridle-like leather straps and bedside tables reminiscent of stirrups, swathed in a sprayed resin finish for a cracked-leather effect.

Even the bathrooms’ scalloped vanity detail recalls a saddle. ‘We wanted to make sure the rooms felt Viennese,’ says Goddard, ‘layered with shadowing and colour.’

Imperial Riding School is located at Ungargasse 60, 1030 Vienna, Austria, imperialridingschool.com

The Hoxton, Vienna opens its doors in the city’s culturally affluent third district: an area with a rich cultural landscape, including renowned museums and prestigious art and music schools. Situated near historic landmarks like the 18th-century Belvedere Palace and the 19th-century Vienna State Opera, the hotel splices the city’s rich heritage with the modern, thoughtful design that defines the British hospitality brand.

The Hoxton, Vienna

The new hotel, which serves as The Hoxton group’s 15th property globally (from London, including Southwark, to Los Angeles), is housed within the former headquarters of the Austrian Economic Chambers, constructed in the 1950s by Austrian architect Carl Appel. BWM Designers & Architects undertook its conversion, ensuring the façade retained its original characteristics while eschewing modern additions. As Markus Kaplan, partner at the studio, describes, this approach brings ‘the starkness and austerity of postwar architecture to contemporary building culture’.

Within the marble-clad landmark, 196 homely rooms and a dynamic range of amenities designed by AIME Studios emerge; first in line is a two-storey lobby boasting original terrazzo flooring, columns wrapped in fluted anodised aluminium and a dramatic back-lit staircase. From the Paris- and New York-inspired Bouvier bistro restaurant to the basement speakeasy named Salon Paradise, and Cayo Coco, the Cuban-inspired rooftop bar and pool, it becomes clear that the Ennismore-founded interior design firm has succeeded in honouring the Austrian midcentury aesthetic while incorporating playful and elegant touches, such as the locally sourced, vintage furniture, rich textures and geometric shapes seen throughout.

A first for The Hoxton brand is the hotel’s Auditorium, featuring tiered cinema-style seating, striped walls and striking electric-blue drapes, all within a spacious 300 sq m area. The versatile venue can host myriad events, from comedy shows to acoustic performances. Meanwhile, a meeting and event room dubbed the Apartment blends classic coffeehouse culture with a traditional Austrian restaurant atmosphere. Unique artwork curated by Sterling Art adorns The Hoxton, Vienna, including an abstract botanical piece by Austrian artist Rini Spiel in the lobby and an oil painting of the Konzerthaus façade by local artist Rudolf Fitz.

The Hoxton, Vienna is located at Rudolf-Sallinger-Platz 1, thehoxton.com

The historic Badeschloss Hotel has recently reopened its doors in the Wes Anderson-esque municipality of Bad Gastein, within Austria’s Salzburg province. Leading the restoration project was Vienna-based architecture firm BWM Designers & Architects, which aimed to rejuvenate the splendour of the property on Straubingerplatz, located next to the scenic Gastein waterfall, and also added a 13-storey extension.

The Badeschloss Hotel in Bad Gastein, Austria

The Badeschloss, which translates as ‘bathing castle’, was originally built in the late 18th century as a public spa, and it has a rich history, having hosted German Emperor Wilhelm I and later served as a military spa. After a period as a hotel from the 1920s, the building had more recently fallen into disrepair.

‘Working with the layers of the past’ served as the guiding redesign principle for the landmark’s renaissance. BWM designer and architect Erich Bernard explains, ‘It is [always] important to us to work with – and not against – the remnants and layers of the past. It’s precisely those layers that give old buildings their charm and special appeal and make them unique.’

The interior design, inspired by Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s production entitled Mystery Sonatas / for Rosa, injected a contemporary touch to the appeal of the old building.

As for the new building, ‘the façade was designed as a double-skinned, coloured-concrete construction‘, says Markus Kaplan of BWM Designers & Architects.

‘The fact that the skins have different thicknesses gives the façade a lively appearance and a relief-like character that blends into the Alpine surroundings,’ adds BWM project manager Martina Lehner.

The 102 guest rooms span the original structure and a new addition. Some feature a freestanding tub (or even a double) and a private sauna, and are designed around the concept of ‘a bath you can spend the night in’ – the idea being that guests can transform their accommodation into a private spa with additional wellness options. In-house restaurant Auntie Heidi serves breakfast and dinner, and there are two bars.

Ascending to the Alpine Swim Club spa experience that tops off the hotel, guests are treated to three floors of bubbling vitality, including a rooftop pool with crystal glass steps. Cobalt blue, yellow and terracotta accents amid tiled, wooden and terrazzo surfaces set a welcoming tone.

The sauna area on the 12th floor offers panoramic views, a seraglio bath, a Finnish sauna, and a herbal pine sauna, emphasising the hotel’s bathing culture.

BWM Designers & Architects teamed up with Andrea von Goetz, the creator of art festivals Sommer Frische Kunst and Art Bad Gastein, to curate the hotel's art concept. A group of contemporary artists from Bad Gastein and beyond contributed their exclusive works to create a unique offering within the space.

bwm.at

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The places Gregor Sailer visits in his long-term projects are beyond perception, geographically and figuratively. They are sites where raw materials are extracted, political buffer zones, humanless landscapes, ‘backdrop’ cities, and areas of camouflage and deception.

His photographic journeys are preceded by meticulous research and often years of preparation to reveal the dynamics that lead to the existence of these places. Sailer presents them in a reduced, calm and deserted visual language.

Titled 'Unseen Places', the thematic exhibition in the Kunst Haus Wien orchestrates parts of six of Sailer’s photographic series across two floors. The works span from his beginnings of shooting underground spaces in German cities (Subraum) to his latest project, The Polar Silk Road, which culminated in an impressively illustrated book, including a collector’s edition, published by Kehrer Verlag. 

Curated by Verena Kaspar-Eisert, the exhibition opens with images from The Potemkin Villages that capture the deceptive phenomena of settlements constructed of nothing more than cheerfully painted façades and the Russian myth that underpins them. With images of backdrop cities used for military close combat training and vehicle testing in the USA and Europe, as well as the detailed replicas of European cities in China, Sailer's pictures give the viewer access to the world of fakes, questioning absurd excesses of contemporary society. 

‘Three images printed oversized on tarpaulins demonstrate the tension between truth and deception even more drastically,’ explains Kaspar-Eisert. While Sailer’s work often takes him to remote, inhospitable parts of the world, he doesn’t shy away from unravelling the oppressive truths at his doorstep. This is potent in The Box, which illuminates a dark chapter in Schwaz, Tyrol, where the photographer was born in 1980. During the Second World War, forced labourers worked in historic underground mine tunnels, which became a factory for building aircraft. To light these tunnels, and their complex history, Sailer brought his equipment 2,000m underground.

While the series Closed Cities highlights artificially created urban zones hermetically sealed off from the outside world, The Polar Silk Road deals with the economic exploitation of the Arctic regions. Enduring snow storms and minus 50°C temperatures for over four years, Sailer documented research stations and oil platforms, but also the silent arms race in the neighbouring countries, making the global power struggle for the Arctic economic area tangible. 

Sailer describes his curiosity in capturing the structural transformation of the landscape and the complex political, military and economic implications of architecture: ‘I'm much more interested in transporting substantial content via architectural objects than I am in showing people,’ 

Sailer’s father worked as an architect, offering him formative access and sensitisation to architecture, space, spatial effects, and the context of light and landscape from an early age, and now form the characteristics of his work: diffuse light illuminating spaces and the voids of shadows. This is how the architecture comes into its own, he says. Giving the objects space and rarely getting caught in the detail; quiet, poetic transcendence reigns in Sailer’s often surreal images. Using only one shot per subject, he’s a perfectionist in taking images with his analogue, large-format camera. ‘It's very slow and static, and I have to accept the basic prerequisites for the setting, the geography and the elements,’ Sailer says of his process.

Alluding to the austere eeriness in his images, curator Kaspar-Eisert comments: ‘Gregor Sailer is not an artist who makes it easy for his audience. He challenges because his work is so concentrated and precise... Sailer doesn't allow you to look the other way.’

INFORMATION

'Unseen Places' is on view at the Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna, until 19 February 2023, kunsthauswien.com; gregorsailer.com

Offering a contemporary take on the traditional Austrian farmhouses of the region, Haus im Obstgarten is the brainchild of local studio Firm Architekten. The beautifully poised house – a small, minimalist timber tower – sits on a slope in the village of Frastanz-Gampelün, on a plot owned by the client and their family for decades. The new structure replaces an old stable building nestled on a hillside between two farmhouses. 

The minimalist architecture approach evident in Haus im Obstgarten’s exterior continues inside, where the only decoration is provided by structural details and the tactile nature of the wood – making this project a contemporary ode to timber construction. Embellishment is kept to a minimum throughout, contrasting with the regional farmhouses' more ornate interior styles, the architects explain.

Mini timber tower for pared-back family living

Built using wood (with the exception of a concrete plinth upon which the main building sits), the house features untreated spruce on its external cladding, while solid spruce was used inside where possible. The woodworking expertise, material and labour were all sourced from within the region, to benefit the local economy and help maintain age-old traditional crafting skills. Meanwhile, the wood used comes from the client's own private forest.

‘The clients' great-grandparents built the neighbouring farmhouse from their own wood and then reforested the forests,' say the architects. ‘The great-granddaughter was able to build her own home now from this wood. In this tradition, the forests have been reforested with 750 young trees for future generations.'

Inside, uncluttered interiors in light, natural spruce are pleasingly contrasted by white clay plastered ceilings and a black steel bookcase design on the staircase. The use of these different materials serves to further highlight the wood that underpins everything in this project, from its architecture, to its conceptual connection to the client's family history.

For more timber architecture, see the winners of the Wood Awards 2021

INFORMATION

firm.ac

An all-timber kindergarten in the west Austrian countryside has been designed to bring nature into the classroom, courtesy of local architect Armin Neurauter. The project, situated outside the village of Silz, is set among greenery, forested mountains and fresh air. It has been conceived to encourage a relationship with wood and nature through an educational setting, using natural materials and sustainable architecture solutions. As a result, the scheme won the Big See Wood Design Award for 2021. 

The design – the result of a competition – is made as a entirely wooden construction. Timber slats make up the building’s skin, allowing for a naturally ventilated interior. Everything, from floors, ceilings and walls, to furniture and play structures, is built in various types of wood, highlighting the material’s scope and variety of applications, while creating a unified, seamless interior design aesthetic. 

Large rectangular openings frame the views out, enhancing visual links with the natural context. Meanwhile, strategically placed skylights ensure natural light reaches every corner. Generous outdoor spaces, both at the front and back of the building, offer more options to connect with the surroundings, including architectural gardens and an adventure playground constructed of wooden elements.

The interiors feature a range of classrooms, a lunch room, an auditorium, and a room for physical activities with a shared play area enriched by timber creations in fluid, carved forms inspired by wood and nature.  

‘In order to convey the relevance of natural and sustainable materials to the children in a playful way, we made a point of using organic raw materials,' says Neurauter. Dinesen Douglas planks in a natural oil finish are used for the flooring throughout. ‘The Dinesen floor is ideal in this context and makes the different spaces blend together harmoniously. We think the Douglas planks help make the movement zones and the open spaces into pleasant play areas for the children.’

Designers and husband-and-wife team Volkmar and Catharina Weiss were working with several established companies and high profile clients like BMW and Austrian Airlines from their main base in Vienna, when, a couple of years ago, they realised that their work/life balance was becoming skewed. Seeking a way out of this, the couple decided to make the big move; relocate their family and business – vald, their ‘agency for sustainable communication' – to their holiday home, an extraordinairy escape in the countyside of Austria's Waldviertel region, to create a live/work headquarters that is healthier, closer to nature and more sustainable. 

This was not about going big – their new home is only 90 sq m. But taking a sustainability minded approach was important to the Weiss's both from a personal and a professional angle. ‘[Our vision was] to live and work with(in) the nature,' says Volkmar. ‘Our worklife did not match our daily family routine and how we wanted to live. We love living in town but we felt the need to retreat in nature, where we can also draw inspiration for our work.'

‘And – of course – we wanted to build the house ecologically, in harmony with the surrounding woods,' he continues. ‘That was also the reason behind the black, charred larch wood cladding that gives the house its distinct character. It’s not only a Japanese tradition [the burnt wood technique of Shou Sugi Ban]; farmers in Austria – a long time ago, in the Alps – also fired their wood huts' exteriors to make them more durable and better against the harsh weather here.'

The pair worked with Vienna based architects Backraum on the design, although they had a clear idea of what they wanted to create, right from the start. ‘We looked at many architecture books and the house is for us like the best combination of all these books and blogs – taking into account our finances of course,' says Catharina. ‘We wanted a house that fits within the natural forest around the site, so using timber was important. We also love functional design and the approach of the Scandinavian architects of the 1930s, 50s and 60s. We wanted to have cupboards, benches, shelves, the bed, all integrated into the house. The furniture needed to be part of a holistic design.'

So now, the larch exterior is complemented by spruce wood inside, matched by bespoke timber furniture and fittings. The structure sits on a concrete base consisting of two walls and a floor. The same material also expands to form the fireplace in the main living space, which is the heart of the home. A master suite is placed under the roof, on a mezzanine above it, and a second bedroom is underneath, opening out into the garden.  

The project's main challenge was the steeply angled site, which is set by a lake and within woods, accessible only via a small, narrow country road. But careful planning and a highly skilled team of contractors helped them through it, and now, the Weiss's home and escape, Haus Thurnberg, is nestled comfortably in the slope, looking out towards the water. ‘We are surrounded by trees and meadows, where we can let the grass grow for our own bees and enjoy the greenery and wildlife, while working,' they say.

INFORMATION

vald.at

backraum.at

It makes sense that ‘SHOW OFF: Austrian Fashion Design’ is huge in scale. It is, after all, the first ever major exhibition of Austrian fashion. Hence, enormous, visually ambitious, displays show the work of 66 designers, 34 photographers, and 250 fashion objects. It’s not just a numbers game, though. Curators Ulrike Tschabitzer-Handler and Andreas Bergbaur balance size and audio and visual spectacle with historical sensitivity as they carefully guide the viewer through five themed spaces about the social and cultural factors shaping Austrian fashion since the 1970s, from fashion education, distribution, and publications to the garments themselves.

Upon entering, the viewer is confronted by talking heads, a video installation showing projections of interviews with agents, stylists, journalists, and managers about Vienna’s fashion scene. This, logically, leads to a look at the fashion department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (‘die Angewandte’). Since the 1980s, guest professors like Karl Lagerfeld, Jil Sander, Raf Simon, and Vivien Westwood have informed the work of young Austrian designers. This information is blasted at you from either side as you walk a runway framed by two huge LCD screens by projection artists Lumine showing output from the school over the years.

SHOW OFF’s centrepiece is a huge scaffolding-like sculpture designed by architect Gregor Eichinger containing 40 years of clothing, shoes, bags, and jewellery from designers including Helmut Lang, Rudi Gernreich, Andreas Kronthaler, and newcomers like Kenneth Ize. It allows a 360-degree-view, accessible by stairs from several levels. Most importantly, since the Austrian state does not have a permanent fashion collection, the viewer has the unique chance to get close to garments without them being stuck behind glass like traditional museum pieces.

The exhibition ends with two neon-lit glass cases containing examples of fashion publications about or from Austria, including issues of Wallpaper* and i-D from the late 1990s and locally important magazines like Wiener, Take, and INDIE. This not only places Austrian fashion design in the wider context of style shifts in graphic design, photography, and typography, but shows that, though the Alpine republic isn’t the first place you think of when it comes to contemporary fashion, it is more than a museum for classic styles from the past.

INFORMATION

‘SHOW OFF: Austrian Fashion Design’, MAK (Museum of Applied Arts), until 12 July. mak.at

ADDRESS

Museum of Applied Arts
Stubenring 5, 1010 Wien
Austria

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As landmarks go, it’s difficult to miss the distinctive silhouette of Turmhaus Tirol. For this, full credit goes to Munich-based architect Grünecker Reichelt and interiors studio Holzrausch for subverting traditional alpine architecture with a slender six-storey pitched-roof tower clad in larch boards that has been piled deep into the mountain side – three stories rising above the snowline, and three cut into the mountain.

The basement levels comprise garage, billiard and wine cellar, and foyer and the first of five guestrooms.

The mood of the house, which is rented in its entirety, is gratifyingly modern alpine in its swathes of fair-faced concrete, natural stone floors, and larch furniture. Light floods in through generously proportioned vitrine windows, the latter creating dramatic backdrops of Zillertal valley with its snow-capped mountains and white-dusted firs.

A sauna leads off the central kitchen on the ground floor, but it’s the verandahs, strategically placed around the house, that offer solitude and bracing tectonic views.

No surprises, but the diversions are here snow-based with a ski resort a bare five-minute drive away. For classic Tyrolean fare, nearby Gastaus Linde has the bases covered, its roast pork and liver an indolent bookend to a day on the slopes. 

ADDRESS

Gerlosberg 17g 6280
Zell am Ziller

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Europe Hotels Private Collection (EHPC)is on a roll. With the paint barely dry on its newly launched Sir Victor hotel in Barcelona, the Amsterdam-based group continues its ambitious expansion, this time pitching up in Vienna.

The fifth property to join the group's playful Max Brown brand, the Vienna iteration, like its other outposts in Amsterdam, Berlin and Düsseldorf, flies the local flag, first with its location in the city's creative 7th district and second with an all Viennese art collection to rival any of the city's notable assortment of museums.

Curated by London-based art consultant Idit Orni, there are over 480 original or specially commissioned pieces, including a giant hand-painted wall mural, emblazoned onto the neighbouring building, by artists Käthe Schönle and Sebastian Schager; thought-provoking, provocative works from Renate Bertlmann and Julia Faber, that dot the public spaces; and photography by Raffaela Bielesch in the 143 guestrooms.

Here, the brand's signature recyclable Auping beds take centre-stage, alongside chairs by Amsterdam-based furniture company Pols Potten, textured wallpaper from BN Wallcoverings, bespoke lighting and quirky Max Brown details, such as the basketball hoop and Crosley record players, in a colourful palette of bold yellows, greens and dusty pinks.

Downstairs, Seven North, designed by Jakob Turgeman, is a convivial spot from Israeli celebrity chef, and man behind the Miznon series of restaurants, Eyal Shani. Here, Shani's clean, fresh, signature South Mediterranean dishes - from the cabbage cake topped with crème fraîche to the whole roasted baby cauliflower and the wood-roasted fish - are sent out from a lively, open kitchen and plonked at the centre of each table for all to tuck in. A great way to begin an evening before settling down to watch a film in the hotel's very own cinema.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

Schottenfeldgasse 74

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In Vienna, something momentous is brewing that could provide a roadmap for navigating our digital future. Through nine distinctive exhibitions, the 2019 Vienna Biennale for Change aims to help us sift through the dizzying cocktail of rhetoric, buzzwords and media fearmongering to make sense of it all.

As Biennales go, this one occupies a unique corner of the landscape. Since its inception in 2017, it’s found a niche in merging disciplines and inspiring change. According to Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, General Director of MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) and initiator of the Biennale, dividing to conquer is never the answer. ‘Keeping creative disciplines separate is never a good thing’ he says. ‘No discipline is inferior. What you need is a dialogue.’

This year’s title, ‘Brave New Virtues: Shaping Our Digital World’ stems from Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World. But where do dystopias come into this, what exactly are ‘Brave New Virtues’ and how do we practice them?

The post-war era promised consumption with no limits, breeding a culture of instant gratification and abundant choice. But with this wealth of potential came the exploitation of resources, little regard for conscious consumption, a scenario where supply exceeded demand, and eventually, a global climate crisis.

Vienna-based design studio Eoos (Martin Bergmann, Gernot Bohmann and Harold Gruendl) have condensed the subject of climate change into five palatable projects. ‘The transition from the current world-destroying lifestyle to a future-proof, sustainable one is not only a question of design, but also of a participative society,’ says Gruendl, who advocates a ‘circular economy’, whereby waste is minimised. Their projects are speculative, but some look only a few tweaks away from the production line.

As a culture, we’re all too familiar with technology designed to fail. Greenfreeze 2 (2019), a sleek modular fridge with detachable components, seeks to defy the idea that if one part breaks, the entire appliance must be binned.

Aware that transport is one of the key culprits of climate change, Eoos developed their lightweight electric vehicle SOV (Social Vehicle, 2018), which consumes one tenth of the resources guzzled up by the average medium-sized car. Its most impressive trick is positioning itself – like a heliostat – towards direct sunlight to recharge.

Meanwhile, Kitchen-Cow (2019) turns food waste into heat. On its worktop, a funnel gobbles food waste into a glass ‘belly’, which ferments to produce biogas and comes full circle as fuel for the hob.

Eoos’ Lunar Lander (2018) looks like a prop from a Stanley Kubrick film and makes use of an unorthodox fuel source: the microbes found in human urine. In practice, if every visitor to this year’s Donauinselfest music festival in Vienna used the Lunar Lander loo, it could generate enough electricity for a 30-million hour phone call.

Thanks to some unfavourable press, Artificial Intelligence has become synonymous with anxieties over job loss, androids overthrowing humanity, and downright confusion. How can we bin its Frankenstein’s monster reputation, and make meaningful use of its skillset? The exhibition ‘Uncanny Values: Artificial Intelligence and You’, curated by Paul Feigelfeld and Marlies Wirth, explains the past, present and future of how AI can infiltrate society, touching on themes from fake news to product design.

In 1970, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term ‘uncanny valley’ to describe robots made with such an uncannily human interface that it induced both fascination and terror. Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s Probably Chelsea (2017) does just that. Thirty 3D-printed versions of American whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s face hover over the exhibition on strings. But these aren’t Manning’s face as we know it. Using a single hair sample, these algorithmically generated masks eerily explain how the same strand of DNA could have culminated in different genders, ethnic backgrounds and bone structures.

Product designers Philipp Schmitt and Steffen Weiss have shaken up the traditional roles of human and machine. Their project, Four Classics (2019) sees eccentric twists on classical seating made with an AI designer and a human maker.

Over the last two decades, digitalisation has reconfigured the requirements for living spaces, and expectations for sustainability in construction have escalated. ‘Space and Experience: Architecture for Better Living’, designed by Tzou Lubroth Architects and curated by Nicole Stoecklmayr, presents ten international architecture and design firms tackling these demands.

In this exhibition, algae seems to be the dernier cri. A large 3D-printed prototype, H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g (2019) by London-based architecture office EcoLogicStudio illustrates the capabilities of blue algae as a self-sufficient architectural material. As the algae grow, photosynthesis generates oxygen and biomass for building materials.

Their Photo.Synth.Etica (2018) is an ‘urban curtain’ of microalgae that can be draped over building façades to sap up air pollution. Other projects include Rotterdam-based MVRDV’s Seoul Skygarden (2017); a 1970s overpass turned horticultural haven, and Civic Architects’ LocHal (2019) – part co-working space, part exhibition hall.

The Vienna Biennale puts raw data in visual context, clarifies the blurs in public discussion and finds altogether more exciting ways of approaching these issues. So how should we view our digital future? The Biennale suggests that while utopian ideals can offer hope, dystopian fear can also help generate momentum for change. Perhaps we need both to forge a path for much needed revolution.

INFORMATION

Vienna Biennale for Change is on view until 6 October. For more information, visit the website

As anyone who likes art and design in equal measure knows, it’s very difficult to fuse the two successfully in your home. Too often you end up with a white-walled gallery-like space filled with great art, but a predictable check-list of design classics and none of the emotional paraphernalia that real life brings – or you get the furniture and fittings right, yet the art looks wrong. However, Francesca von Habsburg, a member of the aristocratic von Habsburg dynasty that ruled Austria and much of Europe for 600-odd years, has spent her life surrounded by both and takes living with them to another level.

The daughter of German steel magnate Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, founder of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, von Habsburg grew up with Canalettos and Cézannes, Rembrandts and Renoirs on her walls, so for her, taking up where her father left off and moving into the realm of 21st-century art was a natural progression.

In 2002, she rented a four-storey palace in Vienna’s UNESCO-protected first district, set up home there and opened TBA21, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary foundation, in the same building. Until her arrival in the former imperial capital, the von Habsburg clan had been barred from the city since it lost its grip in 1918, and the fact that such a vivacious, wild party girl had married into the family became regular tabloid fodder.

But that’s all behind her these days, and now she attracts attention mainly with her avant-garde activities. Last summer, she organised ‘Küba’, an exhibition by Turkish artist Kutlug Ataman, in which he interviewed residents of the Istanbul slum Küba. It took place on a barge that sailed down the Danube from Romania to Vienna. And, at the last two Venice Biennales, on Habsburg has colonised the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni with a beautiful slatted wood art pavilion designed by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and British architect David Adjaye. This is the first of a series of art pavilions that she would like to open. They are still at the concert stage, but could include an eco pavilion in Rio de Janeiro, to be designed by Foreign Office Architects; another on the Croatian island of Lopud by Adjaye; a third on London’s South Bank, by Adjaye and artist Matthew Mitchie; and one in Iceland by Eliasson.

‘Art and architecture work really well together. It’s a natural partnership, and learning to live with art is important,’ says von Habsburg, who had a head start in that department. Her father owned the world’s second largest private art collection after Queen Elizabeth II, and Francesca spent much of her time in her father’s house, Villa Favorita in Lugano. She remembers, as a teenager, visiting the Hermitage in St Petersburg with him. ‘It was 1982, the height of the Cold War, and we were in the basement with torches, looking at Matisses and Van Goghs, all these fabulous paintings that no one had seen for years. My father persuaded the Russians to exhibit them in Europe in exchange for lending them his collection in what was the country’s first European show since the Revolution. Thyssen is a name engraved in marble in Russia.’

Gestures like this typified the baron’s attitude towards his art, and von Habsburg shares her father’s desire for her collection to be seen, rather than hidden away in storage. ‘It’s not just about having a collection, but about what you do with it,’ she says. To this end, she regularly switches pieces between her apartment and gallery where she puts on about five shows a year. Her staff of eight and a full-time curator manage her collection of around 250 pieces, and these days she prefers bankrolling four or five projects a year with her favourite artists – Eliasson, Ritchie and Canadian Janet Cardiff among them – to buying from auctions.

Many of these one-off collaborations have been absorbed into, or made specifically for, her apartment. Ritchie’s drawings and motifs appear randomly all over the walls, while the kitchen is a psychedelic swirl of red and orange floor tiles and 40 ceiling lights by Cuban-American artist Jorge Pardo. Two of von Habsburg’s three children sleep in bright, futuristic ‘pods’ designed by Swiss artists Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann; the luxurious bathroom is an organic mass of sparkly Bisazza tiles; and in the hallway next to her bedroom is a film projector rattling out a 1974 performance piece by Dennis Hopper, in which he surrounds himself with dynamite and lights it. In the attic, a giant, gloopy sculpture made of nylon stockings by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto hangs eerily among giant wooden beams. It’s fantastically atmospheric. ‘In summer, we go and hang out up there with a bottle of wine,’ says von Habsburg.

Yet despite the kooky stuff and the Freuds, Pollocks and Mapplethorpes in the walls, the apartment manages to feel like an unfussy, lived-in place, buzzing with a sinuous stream of guests, staff and children. ‘I hate the elitist element of art. People want to experience it rather than be taught about it, that’s what I’m aiming for.’

As originally featured in the April 2007 issue of Wallpaper* (W*98)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the T-B A21 website 

ADDRESS

Köstlergasse 1
1060 Wien
Austria

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Where in Vienna can you see Andy Warhol, Lucio Fontana and Maria Lassnig under one roof? At the palatial headquarters of Dorotheum, where a series of sales will take place from 27-29 November with a focus on contemporary and modern art. More than 500 works are on offer, spanning 20th-century international and Austrian art as well as watches and jewellery. Dorotheum’s auction evenings cap off a buzzing period for the city with Vienna Art Week recently coming to a close – but the action isn’t over just yet.

The centuries-old European auction house first initiated Vienna Art Week in 2005 with the aim of boosting the Austrian capital’s flourishing art scene onto an international stage. It has since acquired a life of its own, with numerous independent art spaces, galleries, museums and academies taking part in the annual event. And while other cities are gripped with end-of-year lethargy, Vienna is seemingly energised by the frost (the glühwein and Sachertorte certainly help). Many of the exhibitions in the festival’s programme extend into the new year, continuing to attract crowd numbers akin to summer showcases.

At the Kunsthistorisches Museum, filmmaker Wes Anderson and his partner, the writer and illustrator Juman Malouf, have combed through the institution’s vast historical collection to assemble more than 400 objects into various themed rooms – think ‘miniatures’ or ‘green’. From emu eggs to Spanish powdered wig boxes, the pair’s cabinet of curiosities has all the aesthetic trappings of an Anderson film, with each object’s placement treated with studied care in bespoke display cases upholstered in Kvadrat textiles. (This is the third and latest instalment in an ongoing series of collaborations between the Viennese museum and renowned artists, which has previously seen curatorial efforts by Ed Ruscha and Edmund de Waal.)

Over at MAK (Museum of Applied Arts), graphic designers Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh have transformed the historical venue into a multimedia investigation into beauty. The interactive exhibition invites visitors to ponder on this very broad notion through graphic design, product design, architecture, and city planning. Elsewhere, Olafur Eliasson’s permanent installation Yellow Fog transforms the façade of the Verbund-Gebäudes each night after dusk, while Mumok in the MuseumsQuartier is staging an intriguing photography exhibition tracing major political events in Vienna over the past century.

INFORMATION

Dorotheum Auction Week runs from 27-30 November at Palais Dorotheum; ‘Spitzmaus in a Coffin and Other Treasures’ is on view until 28 April 2019 at Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien; ‘Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty’ is on view until 31 March 2019 at MAK; and ‘Photo / Politics / Austria’ is on view until 3 February 2019 at Mumok. For more information, visit the Vienna Art Week website and Dorotheum website

Vienna Contemporary may be opening today for what is only its fourth edition but the budding European art fair has cemented its staying power, having committed to its location at the city’s Marx Halle for the next ten years. With hundreds of fairs vying for collectors’ attention, Vienna Contemporary stands out for its dedication to Eastern European galleries, boasting the highest concentration of any art fair on the circuit.

New to the fair this year is the Explorations section, presenting curated booth exhibits by featured galleries and overseen by curatorial advisor Nadim Sammam. Artists here seem to be preoccupied with the turmoil of global events from this year, from Philip Aguirre’s meditations on the refugee crisis to Maen Florin’s macabre sculptures. Vienna’s Croy Nielsen provides the antidote at its Explorations stand, with an open bar transported from its gallery space.

The relatively young state of Armenia comes to the fore in a special presentation curated by Sona Stepanyan – the first overview ever of contemporary art from the former Soviet Union republic at an international art fair. Nodding to the city’s rich musical heritage, the Living Image programme hits a high note, bringing music performances by artists to life in augmented reality.

Meandering further into the lofty surrounds of Marx Halle, there’s a number of gems to be found at Vienna Contemporary. Brigitte Kowanz’s Instagram-friendly light-based work Connect the Dots (2018) at Galerie Krinzinger seemed to regularly stop fairgoers in their well-heeled tracks, and Julio Rondo’s new series of acrylic paintings on glass at Galerie Andreas Binder’s was a revelation.

One to watch at the fair is young Lisbon-born artist Valter Ventura at Portugal’s Kubik Gallery, whose complex photographs and multimedia installations have won him this year’s Q21 artist residency scholarship. In other Prize news, Nana Mandle (represented by Vienna’s Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer) scooped the Bildrecht Solo Award, while the Artproof grant for photography went to Armenian artist Piruza Khalapyan.

Elsewhere in the city, the Curated By gallery festival (14 September – 13 October) marks its ten year anniversary: Francesco Gennari’s mesmerising wooden ‘mausoleums for worms’ – an ongoing series sitting at the interstice of sculpture and architecture – are worth a look at Galerie Hubert Winter. Several institutions located in MuseumsQuartier Wien will also be open for extended hours on Thursday 27 September as part of MQ Night.

INFORMATION

Vienna Contemporary 2018 runs from 27-30 September. For more information, visit the Vienna Contemporary website

ADDRESS

Marx Halle
Karl-Farkas-Grasse 19
A-1030 Vienna

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For many ageing daydreamers, the ski slopes are one of the last refuges of flattering self-deceit. Where else can you imagine you are in hot pursuit (or being hotly pursued) as you make a spectacular, scything descent down through impressively cinematic scenery? Skiing, like a big budget spy film, is all about escapism. Alpine sequences have been a mainstay of the James Bond films since On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969 and the 24th film in the series, Spectre, upped the ante, with a carefully choreographed mountain chase involving a fleet of Range Rovers and a progressively more ragged aircraft, piloted by 007 himself. Shot over five weeks in and around the Austrian resort of Solden, it was one of the film’s centrepieces.

The chase is also the reason for the existence of 007 ELEMENTS, a new visitor attraction at the top of the Gaislachkogl mountain. The modest Austrian ski resort hit the location jackpot back in early 2014, when the newly opened ICE Q restaurant was chosen to play the role of Spectre’s Hoffler Klinik, location of a pivotal scene in the film. The restaurant’s owner, Jakob Falkner, is a scion of the family that runs the valley’s lifts and cable cars. Falkner made a canny deal with Eon Productions; come and film in Solden but allow me to open a dedicated 007 exhibition once filming is finished.

Cable cars are the crux of Solden’s economy, running up from the valley’s 2370m to the peak of Gaislachkogl at 3,040m. Envisaging the exhibit as an additional lure – especially in the snow-free summer months – Falkner enlisted the help of Hans Obermoser, the Innsbruck-based architect who designed the ICE Q and cable car station. They were joined by Neal Callow, the young art director who had overseen both Spectre and Skyfall. Callow had spent about four months in Solden back in 2014, first with the principle cast members then with the second unit, planning out the meticulous chase scene. ‘We didn’t want to do a traditional museum,’ Callow says, ‘we wanted to engage a new generation in both 007 and filmmaking in general.’

From the outset it was clear this would be no temporary space. Obermoser and Callow worked hand in hand with Tino Schaedler, Head of Design at the LA-based creative agency Optimist Inc, brought on board by Eon to handle the content. The result is ELEMENTS, a mountaintop installation that has emerged from a blizzard of concept sketches and the blending of film and reality.

ELEMENTS combines the drama and intrigue of a film set with the heft of a chunky concrete building, all set in a very challenging location. Construction took two years, waylaid by some unseasonably terrible weather and by the need to use a helicopter to deliver the last 200 cubic metres of concrete following a heavy September snowfall.

Some 2,700 cubic metres of concrete has been folded and buttressed against the mountain, with angular forms reminiscent of the perspective-defying sets of Ken Adam, the doyen of cinematic set design and the man who defined the architecture of Bond. The irony is that Adam wrought his lairs, bunkers, vaults, hangers and laboratories out of plywood and paint, whereas here Obermoser and his team have the real thing. Yet for all its evocation of Ando, the ELEMENTS structure is, by necessity, a piece of architectural artifice, using just as many bits of concealed construction and clever visual tricks as any film set. For a start, those monumental concrete walls are real, but they’re double layered, with a sizeable gap between the interior and outside walls to allow air to circulate in order to keep the temperature down low. Location spotters will also note that the ICE Q restaurant next door bears little resemblance to its film double; the building was cut, pasted and digitally recreated as a four-square, glassy clinic, where Bond first encounters Léa Seydoux’s Dr Madeleine Swann, before pursuing her abductors down the mountainside.

As one might expect, careful attention has been paid to the sequence of spaces. Divided into nine areas, concluding with the obligatory shop, each ‘room’ has an appropriately set-like title; ‘Barrel of the Gun,’ ‘Briefing Room’ and ‘Lair’. Just like a film, one moves along a carefully prescribed route through the building, with spectacular mountain vistas suddenly being revealed alongside displays and plenty of multimedia. The exhibits themselves are relatively light on content, relying heavily on the many millions that have been poured into the films over the decades. There’s an interactive section based loosely on Q’s wunderkammer of lethal devices but the majority of the 1,050 sq m exhibition space is devoted to an in-depth explanation of the Solden chase sequence. The building is unheated, lest it damage the permafrost that serves as its foundations. The visitor experience is therefore a breezy one, best undertaken in boots and ski gear before barrelling back down the mountain.

It’s the architecture of command and control, a brutalist baroque punched through the mountaintop. Just as Hogwarts is the steampunk fever dream of Victorian Gothic, ELEMENTS is Tadao Ando put through a Ken Adam Instagram filter. ‘What was unique about the project was the idea of architecture being carved into the location and creating a spatial sequence at the same time,’ Tino Schaedler explains, and the team has done an excellent job of recreating the chilly aura of Cold War fetishism and bunker chic.

Bond is at a crossroads. Dating back to 1962, it’s the longest running film series in the history of cinema. While Sam Mendes and Daniel Craig successfully sucked the more vaudevillian aspects of the character out and replaced it with a steely millennial seriousness, Bond’s casual streak of toxic masculinity is now chronically past its sell by date. His crises, as chronicled by the four Craig films, are increasingly played out before an audience that has no reason or desire to empathise with him. Eon is pinning its hopes on Danny Boyle being able to bring back the icy wit. For now, brand extensions like ELEMENTS will serve to keep Bond in the popular consciousness, playing up the undeniable thrills of the series’ big action set pieces. Perhaps Eon has been eyeing the massive empires established by the likes of Potter, Marvel and Star Wars, where Extended Universes exist to spawn billion-dollar grossing titles alongside toys, theme parks and other ‘experiences’. A spectacular set piece on a far-flung Austrian mountain might not seem a natural spot for a theme park, but to the credit of the architects and designers, ELEMENTS captures the films’ brooding feel. Will this concrete outcrop outlive the legend of the character it celebrates?

INFORMATION
007 Elements opens on 12 July. For more information, visit the Sölden website

Simon Fujiwara — known for his delving into the pull of human mystery in his art — has built a museum within a museum at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, based on a toy model of the Anne Frank House purchased at the gift shop on a visit last year.

As ‘one of the most authentic architectural experiences on earth,’ Fujiwara explains, the Anne Frank House museum, has been restored to astonishingly accurate historic detail, to represent the original house in which Frank sought refuge from the Nazis as closely as possible for millions of visitors.

The wallpaper, for example, has been perfectly matched using found wallpaper manufactured in the GDR. ‘My mind was blown – I was standing there thinking, “the gift to the world that is the Anne Frank House is wrapped in German wallpaper”. For some this would be distasteful but for me it was a beautiful example of truthful humanity.’

On returning to his studio, Fujiwara came up with a meta-museum of his own. ‘If the Anne Frank House is a monument to a moment in history I knew I wanted Hope House to be a shifting, changing place that could act as a conduit of certain ideas of our time.’ He told Wallpaper*, as the exhibition opened to the public last week.

In his architectural reconstruction based on the model Anne Frank House – first displayed at Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv last year – Fujiwara has replaced items with objects that resonate in 2018, products and items he says make him feel uncomfortable, including a Pierre Hermé chocolate mask, based on an indigenous African mask, that the artist bought in Paris, and has kept in his fridge for years ‘because it terrifies and excites me.’

‘At first it disgusted me – how can a former colonising country allow the production of indigenous artefacts from a former colonial country as luxury chocolate? Chocolate and Africa as a visual connection was also dubious to me – it felt like it was confirming prejudices. Then I discovered that part of their marketing line was that the beans of the chocolate mask were also from Ghana – hinting at the idea of local economy being supported by this.’

It’s just one of the objects within Hope House that question the power of product and the complexities and contradictions facing the contemporary consumer. ‘This object like many in the show make you feel things, desire, disgust, sadness, excitement – but for me, I can’t draw a conclusion on their right to exist because there is always a counter argument.’

The model museum he picked up in Amsterdam, itself a consumer object that represents something awful and tragic, now manufactured and sold to visitors as a souvenir – that at the same time, ensures Anne Frank’s story is not forgotten, ‘became for me, the perfect symbol of our times, where everything is connected and merged more and more. Philanthropy, capitalism, hope, terror, fantasy, fact…’ The consumer paradox, Hope House suggests, is perhaps ultimately unresolvable.

Designed meticulously in exhaustive detail, Hope House plays with notions of taste, authenticity, history and the emotional tug of capitalism – but it doesn’t serve up a straightforward critique. ‘Today, when our entire world is more and more based on surface reactions and simple judgements I think it’s more important than ever to present no answers, but well-crafted and generous questioning.’

INFORMATION

‘Hope House’ is on view until 2 April. For more information, visit the Kunsthaus Bregnez website

ADDRESS

Kunsthaus Bregnez
Karl-Tizian-Platz
6900 Bregenz

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Theresa Häfele and Julia Nuler met at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna where they studied architecture, joining forces after working on a successful first competition together. They formed miss-vdr architektur (2010-2015) with partners Matthäa Ritter and Johanna Werschnig, under the principle of founding an all-female practice. Inspired by heroines such as Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Jane Jacobs, Denise Scott Brown or Lina Bo Bardi, the firm also looked to other areas of contemporary culture for inspiration such as theatre and music. It is in their new formation of Häfele Nuler Architects that the team will focus further on enriching their practice with art and architecture theory.
annm.at, julia-nuler.at

Vienna may soon be home to a new population of exiles from Vancouver’s hyper inflated housing market – especially in the wake of ‘The Vienna Model: Housing for the 21st-Century City’, a new exhibition at the Vancouver Museum.

On through 16 July, the exhibition – curated by Wolfgang Forster and William Menking and spanning text, photography and video – raises many questions about two of the world’s ‘most liveable’ cities that consistently reach the upper rungs of the ‘top ten’ lists compiled by the Economist and other sources. While the exhibition is heavily promoted and subsidised by the Austrian government, and doesn’t delve into much controversial or critical discourse (like say, housing for immigrants or refugees), it does a fine job of showcasing Vienna’s public housing in a city where 60 per cent of the population lives in municipally built, owned or managed housing.

Innovative forms of social housing include a coffin-factory turned housing estate, colour-coded housing projects designed for Alzheimer’s patients, and the Alt-Erlaa development set on 59 acres of land with swimming pool topped towers that read like luxury flats, but are actually full of family friendly homes, complete with schools and shopping plazas, and home to 7,000 residents. The idea of ‘luxury for all’ is quite foreign to Vancouver, currently gripped by a housing crisis, where high-end towers are bought up by offshore investors and young families are forced to flee to distant suburbs.

While the Vienna Model has toured to other cities including Hong Kong and New York, where it provoked much discussion about social housing policy, in Vancouver the curators have teamed up with local artist collective Urban Subjects to explore more specificity in terms of the Vancouver/Vienna connection. A special comparison panel highlights statistics such as greater Vancouver’s (population 2.5 million) 25,745 social housing units and 1-7 year wait times, and Vienna’s (population 1.8 million) 220,000 units and average one year wait time.

While the exhibition often has a rose-coloured glasses feel (one can almost hear Vienna, City of My Dreams in the background) and doesn’t address, for instance, the spate of nouveau riche Russians buying up downtown flats – compared to the world’s third least affordable city Vienna does seem a social housing idyll. But with its Red Vienna legacy and housing market much more tightly controlled by the city than Vancouver’s neoliberal, developer driven market, it’s hard to imagine a direct translation of the Vienna model to Canada’s third largest city.

In the end, the Vienna model, held in its liveability list rival Vancouver, begs the question: ‘liveable’ for whom?

INFORMATION

‘The Vienna Model: Housing for the 21st-Century City’ is on view until 16 July. For more information, visit the Museum of Vancouver website

ADDRESS

Museum of Vancouver
1100 Chestnut Street
Vancouver BC V6J 3J9

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Driving up a gently winding private road in the countryside beyond Vienna, a dark house emerges from a vista of endlessly rolling meadows and rows of fruit trees. Settled on a southeast facing slope with uninterrupted panoramic views extending for 150km, this striking family home is designed by Austrian architecture practice WILLL Architektur.

A weighted cantilever strong-arms the house directly into the landscape, connecting the master bedroom on the first floor to the landscape, while opening up a covered terrace below for dining. A wooden sun deck and 15m natural swimming pond extends again further into the valley.

The house has a dense presence, owed to its rough plastered dark grey exterior walls. It holds its own in the striking countryside setting, while also embedding itself in its context. Frameless glazing allows windows to float and oak garage doors are seamlessly integrated.

Take an interactive tour of Where the Eagles Fly

Architect Johannes Will worked with experts in feng shui and geomancy – as the practice do in all their projects – to achieve a natural and spiritual balance across the interiors and architecture. On the ground floor, the dining, living and kitchen spaces are grouped together and oriented towards the valley. Corner glazing opens the kitchen up to the dining terrace, expanding the space naturally during the summer months.

‘When I enter the house, I’m always touched by the tremendous view and how it is staged. I like the contrasts. On one hand the view and on the other hand maximum intimacy,’ says Will, who used oak paneling on the interior walls and some of the ceilings, to bring warmth into the house.

Taking into consideration his client’s request to be able to stargaze, Will extended the ceiling of the master bedroom to 4m high and tilted it to 29 degrees. Using a 5 sq m piece of glass to open up views of the sky above, the room is completely exposed to the outdoors, while also feeling sturdy and secure. A sliding door opens to a sheltered courtyard that connects to the master bathroom.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the WILLL Architektur website

‘It’s one thing to design a house for an artist, but it’s another to design a house for your mother and father,’ says architect Stuart Veech of the home created for artists Vadim Kosmatschof and Elena Koneff in the countryside outside Vienna. Veech’s partner and collaborator, Mascha Veech-Kosmatschof, grew up in Soviet Russia surrounded by the avant-garde work of her parents – Kosmatschof, a sculptor, and Koneff, a visual artist. In 1979, the family emigrated to Austria, where she studied architecture before moving to London’s Architectural Association. US-born Veech also studied at the AA and spent time in Kosmatschof ’s studio as an apprentice.

In 1993, the pair set up their first practice together, quickly establishing themselves as experts in the emerging field of designing for broadcasting. Veech x Veech is now one of the world’s leading designers of TV studios, blending real and virtual elements to create high-tech environments that are part dynamic graphic design and part intricate 3D space. The fast-changing world of TV identities is far removed from this austerely elegant mountainside retreat and studio. The project took around ten years to realise, from the long search for a suitable site through to the intensive groundwork required to bed the new structure into the slope. Kosmatschof works in wood and steel, cutting, tracing and interlocking sizeable forms to make kinetic sculptures that twist and turn in the open air.

Back in the Soviet era, he created large-scale pieces, such as the striking form that stood outside the Cultural Centre in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. He continues to make works in a variety of sizes – silhouetted sculptures that change depending on the angle of viewing. This rich formal heritage drove the design of the new house from the outset. As well as studio space, it houses a private gallery and several terraces carved from the landscape, on which Kosmatschof’s work is arranged, the mirrored elements sending scattered reflections across the valley below. ‘The whole house is designed around art,’ Veech says, adding that ‘it’s very hard to create multi-level space for sculpture’.

The solution is the terrace system, but also the extreme approach of embedding the house within the mountainside, effectively creating four massive display levels that step up the slope. The architecture itself is pared back, with a sleek contemporary finish and a simple glazed façade, above which looms a large cantilevered element containing the main living room. Bedrooms are also on this upper level, with the glass-roofed studio, kitchen and main exhibition space located on the ground floor, which joins seamlessly with the main terracing. ‘We tend to split our work differently,’ Veech says. ‘Mascha does architecture and I do a lot of broadcast spaces.’ Veech- Kosmatschof worked closely with the late Zaha Hadid, first studying under the architect in Vienna in the early 1990s. She subsequently taught alongside Hadid at the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, as well as co-authoring a book on the projects built by Hadid’s practice. For her parents’ house, Veech-Kosmatschof has created a space that seems to drink in the spectacular surroundings, allowing the sculptures to breathe in the open space and giving her parents the room to create and display art.

‘The house is based on different views to both landscapes and sculptures,’ says Veech. ‘There’s always a dialogue. Vadim often works outside, sometimes in the space beneath the cantilever, depending on the weather.’ The treeline looms over the house, creating what Veech-Kosmatschof calls a ‘natural barrier’ that helps to enclose the site without feeling too overbearing. ‘We sculpted the space according to the views, from outside, inside and across,’ she says, explaining how the generous cantilever also acts as a vital screen in the summer and traps the low winter sun. ‘It creates a zone beneath it that is semi-interior.’ Veech-Kosmatschof describes the 380 sq m building as an ‘energy centre’. ‘It’s simultaneously open and closed – an energetic and magical location.’

Since finally finishing the interior space (Kosmatschof happily worked there for years before it was completed), the architects have been busy creating new terraces for the burgeoning sculpture collection. ‘They have become framing devices for the property,’ Veech says. ‘You have reflections and a constant dialogue between the environment, nature and the sculptures. You feel that you are hovering above the valley.’ Most importantly of all, it is the art that has driven the forms, spaces and orientation of this multi- functional house. For the architects, the project has been one of their most intense and involved. ‘We’re quite unique in that we can do broadcast studio work as well as a house for two working artists,’ Veech says. But whereas a television studio is dedicated to intense, compacted slices of visual drama, this house is designed for a long view on an impressive life in art.

As originally featured in the May 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*218)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Veech x Veech website

With a spa tradition dating to the Roman era, Austria has long been a destination for pioneering systems in holistic health. Now it has another draw: the newly renovated Lanserhof Lans, one of three European spas from the Lanserhof Group.

Based in the village of Lans, just minutes from Innesbruck, the 30-year-old medical spa sits amid a scenic setting of meadows, expansive forests and the dramatic Alpine backdrop of snow-capped mountains. The real draw however, is what lies behind its brand new facade. A recent makeover by Düsseldorf-based architect Christoph Ingenhoven has elevated Lanserhof from a resort to a bells and whistles mega-retreat with the addition of a five-storey curvilinear building. The new structure houses a collection of light and airy modern suites dressed in a soothing mineral-based palette and filled with sensory materials such as wood, stone, linen and loden, while a chosen few also include access to a bucolic roof terrace.

And while the architectural renewal is stunning, it’s the spa menu that is the real game changer. New facilities — including a new bathhouse, medical cold chamber and a saltwater pool — support the spa’s signature LANS Med Concept programme, which is tailored to guests’ needs and touted as a regeneration process involving detoxification, purification and de-acidification. A minimum of seven days is required to complete the plan, not that anyone is complaining.

INFORMATION

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ADDRESS

Kochholzweg 153

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After two decades at Vienna’s famous Naschmarkt, Johannes Lingenhel traded in his much-loved deli stall to set up a brick and mortar establishment that not only houses the city’s first cheese production facility, but is, as he says, an urban food workshop that comprises a food shop, bar, restaurant, private event space and cookery school.

Occupying a former manor house dating from 1795, the food emporium has been converted by local firm Destilat to feature rare Austrian terazzo tiles, golden viper granite and a custom-designed butcher block that draws visitors into the street-front shop, where specialty chutneys and fine wines can be bought to go with the mouthwatering selection of cheeses and salamis sliced to order behind the counter.

Beyond the bar, where custom angular shelving and sleek taps decant house-made vermouth and tonic, historically protected archways mark the entrance to two Michelin star chef Daniel Hoffmeister’s intimate restaurant quarters from where he produces fresh, seasonal dishes such as creamy burrata with elderflower, cucumber, apple and berry or succulent pork belly served with octopus and aubergine.

Intentionally located in the former stables where the labour originally took place, diners are invited past the restaurant, through the open kitchen to the private dining room, where guests can watch the production of camembert, yoghurts and mozzarella, among other cheeses, made from the milk of Lingenhel’s local water buffaloes. Here, elegant Meshmatics chandeliers by Dutch designer Rick Tegelaar accompany original wrought iron hay bales, while restored water basins - no longer used to nourish the stables' tenants - have been repurposed as ice baths for libations.

INFORMATION

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ADDRESS

Landstraßer Hauptstraße 74

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Born from the ambitions of a small family firm, Aeijst is an organic spirit described as the ‘most English gin of Austria’.

Founded in September 2014, Aeijst was concocted by Wolfgang Thomann and his three children as an unorthodox Austrian tipple. The gin began its life in southern Styria, a region of the country never before associated with gin. However, the product embraces the region's character by adopting the local dialect in its brand – being named after a local word for tree branches.

The spirit is made up of entirely organic ingredients that the company claims to have combined into ‘one harmonic recipe’. Aiming for a palate of purity, the gin selects juniper as its main ingredient, further supported by a range of botanicals, such as lemon, orange peel, ginger, coriander and others. This blending of flavours, the company hopes, will create ‘distinctive notes of juniper followed by fresh citrus and herbal aromas’.

Being only just over 18 months old, the alcoholic beverage has not taken long to add ‘award-winning’ to its credits – winning silver in the ‘London Dry Gin’ and ‘Gin and Tonic’ categories at the International Wine and Spirit Competition 2015. This recognition may not be surprising to Thomann, however, who describes Aeijst as an ‘elaborate formula’ that ‘is pleasant and stays on your palate for a while’.

With its beautifully crafted bottle, elegant packaging and carefully considered combination of organic ingredients, Aeijst proves it’s spirited enough to rival any English gin, Hogarth be damned.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit Aeijst’s website

Set amongst the leafy canopy of a peaceful forest, against the serene backdrop of Hokkaido’s pristine landscape, Zaborin is the area’s newest retreat, just a short drive south from the city of Sapporo.

Comprising just 15 villas – all of which overlook the endless bucolic terrain – the property sits snugly within the surrounding greenery, providing optimum immersion into the area’s idyllic location.

Local architect Makoto Nakayama, boosted the characteristics of a traditional ryokan, with the addition of floor-to-ceiling glass, modern furnishings and concrete details. Each room meanwhile, comes with its own indoor and outdoor onsen, which are filled with the same natural spring water used for the under-floor heating and to melt the snow-covered pathways in winter.

In the kitchen, chef Yoshihiro Seno serves a choice of authentic teppanyaki and kaiseki fine dining, ensuring guests never have a reason to leave.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

76-4 Hanazono
Kutchan-cho
Abuta-gun
Hokkaido

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Hotelier Florian Weitzer's latest project – a 1950s concrete block formally home to Austria’s domestic intelligence agency - may be one of the less grandiose buildings of Vienna’s Innere Stadt, but its black granite and sandstone facade, sympathetically preserved by local architecture firm Atelier Heiss, is now under historic preservation, and is no less impressive than the grandes dames it neighbours.

Inside, a large hand-crafted chandelier modelled on traditional designs by Viennese glassworker Lobmeyr hangs above Thonet chairs on the ground floor, and 188 rooms and suites feature gunmetal grey walls, Anglepoise lamps, white marble table tops, dark parquetry and round, leather rimmed Jacques Adnet-style mirrors by Gubi.

There are three dining options; the stately 200 cover dining room serves a modern take on Austrian classics such as veal kidneys and Tafelspitz, the more intimate Gulasch & Champagne is suited to early evening aperitifs, while the Grand Étage rooftop bar sits alongside the pool and has knockout views across to Prater Park in the east. For us the option to sip Mumm champagne from the comfort of a cast-iron art nouveau tub in-suite was too much to resist.

INFORMATION

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ADDRESS

Schubertring 10-12

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Among a series of new buildings created for Swarovski’s recently reopened Kristallwelten (Crystal Worlds) museum in the idyllic Austrian town of Wattens, Oslo and New York-based architecture firm Snøhetta have designed the complex’s signature restaurant and cafe. Named Daniel’s, after the company’s original founder, the space is housed in a curved pavilion embedded into the museum’s garden; the concrete structure frames floor-to-ceiling windows that flood the room with natural light and afford diners a view into the surrounding gardens, including Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot’s remarkable Crystal Cloud art installation. Walnut and suede furniture adds organic texture and contrast to a starkly minimalist interior, while the menu serves a number of crowd-pleasers from regional specialties such as Wiener schnitzel to house-made patisserie and baked treats.

INFORMATION

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ADDRESS

Kristallweltenstraße 1
6112 Wattens
Austria

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Unable to renovate the existing building, hotelier Florian Weitzer did the only sensible thing and installed a standalone prefab living pod on the roof of his Graz property, Hotel Daniel. The suite – the city’s highest – is part of the LoftCube concept from architect Werner Aisslinger, who was also behind the hotel's original design. Assembled off-site, the 420 sq ft structure is a seamless blend of bedroom area, living room, kitchen and bathroom. The neutral tones and sleek furnishings meanwhile, serve as the perfect backdrop to the city’s panoramic views, which are framed by floor-to-ceiling windows.

ADDRESS

Europaplatz 1
8020 Graz
Austria

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Viennese gourmets prize Steirereck as much for chef Heinz Reitbauer’s daring mod-Austrian menu (think mountain trout seasoned with lime salt, and char cooked in hot beeswax) as for the fin de siècle charm of its Art Nouveau dining room overlooking the river Wien. The restaurant’s enduring popularity, however, meant that despite a renovation a few years ago, diners were beginning to feel somewhat cramped. Steirereck’s recent extension by local architects PPAG looks sets to win over more converts. Occupying what used to be a terrace leading to the children’s playground, the new wing comprises a series of silvery glass pavilions. Depending on the weather, entire panels rise vertically like escape pods on a mother ship to open up the dining room to the park outside. Inside, compact concertina screens – made of industrial timber and curling like lemon peel – section off clusters of tables. All the better, we think, to provide the illusion of serene isolation while tucking into the chef’s tart pudding of quince served with burnt milk and lavender.

INFORMATION

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ADDRESS

Am Heumarkt 2A
Vienna
Austria

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Just an hour away from Salzburg in the alpine town of Saalbach-Hinterglemm lies Hotel Wiesergut. The lodgings are owned by Josef Sepp and Martina Kröll and have been in the Sepp family since 1350, with Joseph's great-grandmother opening a guesthouse on the plot of land two generations ago. Comprising 24 rooms, the 14th century family estate includes a traditional white four-storey building that has been transformed by local firm Gogl & Partners Architekten into 17 'manor suites', surrounded by a series of modern, low-lying structures with floor to ceiling windows that house seven garden suites. The interiors include warming tones of mushroom browns, set against wood and stone. Rooms are furnished with bespoke pieces such as hand-blown glass chandeliers by Cologne-based Isabel Hamm, and artworks by ceramicist Petra Lindenbauer and sculptor Andreas Reichlin. Food is by the Kröll family, featuring seasonal, regional produce and incorporating their tradition concept of farm-to-table dining.

INFORMATION

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ADDRESS

Wiesern 48
Hinterglemm 5754
Austria

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Sans Souci might translate to 'without a care', but the interiors of this new Viennese property have been put together very precisely indeed. A former inn dating from 1872, the grand building in the central bohemian quarter of Spittelberg, has now received a vigorous makeover by Philippe Starck and John Hitchcox's London-based Yoo Studio. On the outside, deep purple window coverings against the building's classic white façade have an instant and dramatic impact, while the interior is a sumptuous mix of modernist and antique furniture. The 63-room lodging's standout feature is a vast collection of modern art, including original paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and Steve Kaufman, while an eclectic assortment of chandeliers grace almost all the public spaces, including the indoor swimming pool in which guests can unwind after a day of culture at the nearby MuseumsQuartier.

INFORMATION

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ADDRESS

Museumstraße 1
1070 Wien
Österreich

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Housed in a former office block built by architect Georg Lippert in 1962, the Hotel Daniel is the third addition to the eye-catching Weitzer boutique hotels. Designed by Vienna-based architecture firm Atelier Heiss, the listed building is Austria's first to feature a curtain wall façade. Guests enter into an inviting open space known as Bakery, which incorporates a lobby, bakery, café and lounge area in one. The space is filled with vintage furniture from the 1960s, mixed with wood palettes used as coffee tables. The 115 minimalist rooms, decorated in shades of grey and white, with concrete ceilings, offer fabulous views across Vienna. The hotel doesn't come with lots of bells and whistles. Don't expect a mini bar or even good cupboard space. But you will like the rooms, as long you travel light, and there are little extras like hammocks, ideal for relaxing in before a night out, and Vespa scooters and bikes to hire, for exploring the city.

INFORMATION

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ADDRESS

Landstraßer Gürtel 5-7

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It took a Tyrolean architect - Johann Obermoser - to go against local tradition and give après skiers a view you don't get with a wooden chalet. Ice Q, his ethereal glass and steel design 3,048m up Gaislachkogl mountain, is the highest restaurant in the Otztal Alps, connected to the Gaislachkoglbahn lift by an equally delicate suspension bridge. The roof terrace seats 34 and the 94-seat dining room is furnished with local larch timber and dozens of Tom Dixon 'Void' copper pendant lights. A signature wine, 'Pino3000' - a collaboration between pinot growers from Austria, Germany and the South Tyrol - is matured in a wine cellar on the mountain.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

Gaislachkoglbahn II lift
Gaislachkogl mountain
Sölden
Austria

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Designer bottles are usually the preserve of high end fragrances. Save for a few quirky shapes (and the original 1915 Coke bottle), the best-known wine branding is confined to the label (and some very notable names have turned their hand to this tiny canvas). Austrian winemaker Leo Hillinger wanted to reclaim the bottle as the primary place for aesthetically minded vintners to vent their expertise.
 
Hillinger, who grows wine just outside Vienna, commissioned Zaha Hadid to create the ultimate bottle for the ultimate wine, Icon Hill. The especially fine 2009 vintage was selected to fill the bottle and just 999 bottles will be produced. A decade ago, Hillinger commissioned Austrian architects Gerner°Gerner Plus to design a sleek production building above the Jois vineyards. The result is one of the best examples of small scale winery architecture in recent decades, a strong design sensibility that is carried through to to the brand new bottle.
 
Hadid's studio has designed a bottle, box and identity for this extra special vintage, exaggerating the curve of the bottle with an unconventional concave form that gives it a light, tiptoeing footprint. The studio's first bottle design (perhaps unsurprisingly), Icon Hill arrives with instant collector status.

The Werkraum House, in the small village of Andelsbuch, is the latest addition to Swiss Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor's carefully composed portfolio of work; and, with his known love of crafts, it will come as no surprise.

Zumthor has a long-standing relationship with Werkraum, the crafts and trade association in Austria's leafy Bregenzwald region. The association counts 80 makers, builders and artisans - from brick-workers, upholsterers and painters, to cabinet-makers, metal workers, cobblers, carpenters and floor-layers - in its membership register.

Zumthor's contact with Werkraum started in the early 1990s, while he was working on the Kunsthaus in nearby Bregenz. 'Ever since that, he kept in touch with our craftspeople', recalls Werkraum CEO Renate Breuss. 'As a trained cabinet maker himself he was so moved by the passion and ideas behind our association that he offered to design the building in 2008.'

Now completed, the timber and concrete building combines a contemporary, minimalist design with the area's centuries-old local traditions. The relatively modestly-shaped low structure features a striking, large wooden roof and generous, glass-enclosed exhibition spaces. Equipped with offices, seminar and meeting rooms and display areas, it was designed in painstaking detail to provide a much needed space for the association's activities and also to act as a platform for promoting the work and value of local crafts.

'The building was conceived as a showcase and a meeting point for the crafts', says Breuss. 'The result reflects our values and suits our purpose very well - to be a meeting point for the people of the valley and for people from abroad, for crafts and culture. Zumthor brings together the rural context with the world, the local qualities and spirits with the international.'

The recently opened Werkraum House has also launched its first exhibition – which runs until 5 October – where its 80 members will each present one piece that highlights their approach.

ADDRESS

Werkraum Bregenzerwald 
Hof 800
A-6866 Andelsbuch
Austria

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Snowy peaks and peaked roofs dominate the landscape of the South Tyrol, though one architect is doing her best to challenge tourists' expectations. Ulla Hell, whose architecture practice Plasma Studio built the delicately slinky Strata Hotel in 2008, has transformed a neighbouring property with the same blunt angles and timber-strip cage-like shell.

Hell's initial challenge was to refurbish a 1960s guests house, built in the twee Dolomite vernacular, adding new common areas and staircases at its core. That challenge grew when she decided to move her family, as well as an Italian office for her firm, into an annex on the site.

The architect doesn't do pitched roofs; Plasma Studio has become known for its contemporary, geometric forms that fold over landscapes like origami. Hell eliminated the uninhabitable pitched roof of the hotel and replaced it with a wood-slat entity that reaches over the existing structure and slopes back down to the rising terrain. The new overhang incorporates a vast, glass-walled living space and wraparound terrace - both set at an angle from the original footprint, like a box lid come loose.

From there, the family home reaches out to a grassy landing to the rear of the hotel, protected always by that timber-strip shell. The main entrance is on that level field, via a jagged break in the wood slat, where the house appears to have been cut through by lightning. The interior forms, mostly glazed on multiple sides, follow that angular motif.

The walls inside are impressively dynamic, folding in places and never travelling in one direction for long. Jutting here and there, they make room for triangles of seating and shelving, and give way to shards of glazing that bring the mountain views inside.

The interior seems meticulously and mathematically planned, but Hell says she worked 'from the outside inward, building toward the hillside that comes to the house, playing with how the volume touches the ground, smoothing the boundary between the natural topography and the house itself'.

At the same time, she says she wanted to challenge 'the internal experience of the spaces'. But what she ended up truly challenging was our perception of contemporary architecture.

Created on the site of Austrian steel company Voestalpine's HQ in Linz, this sculptural Pastoral Care complex is the latest offering from emerging architecture practice X Architekten. The centre was designed to serve both liturgical and secular functions for the company's personnel and is set in a disused space next to their industrial estate.

The main building incorporates a chapel, meeting and event rooms, offices, workshops and a bar. In order for the building to fit within the surrounding urban and industrial landscape, the architects opted for an abstract contemporary form, rather than using a more traditional ecclesiastical architectural language. The shape was developed further in relation to the area's hilly geography, by 'cutting into and hollowing out the hillside'.

Nestled within an embankment of dark slag-stone and pebbledash, the building is made of concrete and clad internally - as well as externally in parts - in white painted wood in the chapel, event room and bar area. Its main circulation axis leads out to the woods.

Outside the main building sits a wooden shed, containing storage and gardening facilities, as well as a steel carport. A mesh metal 'bell court' (its hollow form is ideal for distributing the sound) is incorporated into the main structure, whose planted roof serves as a garden.

The complex's irregular shape leads to an equally polygonal ground floor plan that arranges the workspaces to the north and the more social and religious areas to the south. Above the ground floor is second level housing guest rooms, an apartment and a youth area. Flexible and multifunctional, the centre features room dividers that allow for a choice of either separating the spaces into rooms or uniting them into a single large hall.

With a shape that cleverly accommodates all the different uses in a homogenous and harmonious space, this centre offers a modern response to the Voestalpine community's need for integrating religious and secular facilities.

Dubbed 'the first ever carbon-neutral, single-family house in Austria' by the client - leading roof window specialist Velux - the Sunlighthouse by Hein-Troy Architekten provided an aptly daring and contemporary backdrop to our Next Generation Austrian fashion story ('Alpine Club', W*154 issue).

The clean-lined, wooden house incorporates three floors and is located in the town of Pressbaum, a half-hour drive from Vienna. The main living spaces sit on the ground floor, with cleverly elevated roof windows bringing plenty of light into the sitting room - a feat, given that the nearby mountains cast a shadow on the plot, making natural lighting with conventional windows difficult. On the top floor are bedrooms and the lower ground floor contains storage and utility rooms.

Completed a few months ago, the house's most prominent design feature is the striking sloped roof - the architects' response to the steep gradient of the site. As well as skylights, the roof also includes solar panels that feed electricity to the structure's grid. Passive cooling can be achieved in the warm months and, adding to the building's eco credentials, there is a ground-source heat pump hot water system.

Sunlighthouse is one of a series of 'study' houses commissioned by Velux as part of its Model Home 2020 project. Locations range from northern Europe to the Mediterranean, showcasing the variety of Velux applications and allowing the company to study the products in different environments. The program not only promotes great architecture but also helps create the company's neutral CO2 emissions solutions and energy efficiency development. The houses produced through the program are studied closely and then released for habitation.

Supported by scientific partners Donau-Universität Krems and the Institute for Healthy and Ecological Building (IBO), the Sunlighthouse has already won the Austrian State Prize for Environment and Energy Technologies.

Fun, comfortable, unique, and yet still a vital part of the family house during the absence of guests – that’s a sure sign of a successful guest house, according to German practice Baumraum. Its versatile tree house project in a small village near Salzburg was completed in 2008. Doubling as a relaxation room and children’s playground, the structure is used all year round. The main volume of the lightweight tree house stands on eight 4.5m-high stilts, while a terrace connects it to the stairs, overlooking a small creek. The nearby trees carry most of the weight, via heavy-duty straps, steel ropes and two stilts, and the walls are insulated framework structures, lined with oak boards and with Cor-ten steel on the façade.

Over the years, Baumraum director Andreas Wenning has become expert at creating these tree house guest houses; in Austria and around the world, for private clients and theme parks. ‘The guests and our clients like the sense of playfulness and adventure attached to it, the warmth of a small space, its proximity to nature,’ Wenning explains. For anxious hosts, the tree house offers another bonus – it lends itself as the perfect conversation starter.

ADDRESS

Baumraum, Roonstrasse 49, Bremen, Germany

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