The synergy of open and closed

Kitzbühel | Issue 56 | Winter 2024/2025 | Text: Barbara Jahn

A family of entrepreneurs has toyed for a long time now with the idea of expanding their home, equipped with pool and lakeside view, by adding a pool-and-party house. The prospects, ideas, fantasies and visions of these sophisticated people were crystal clear from the start: The new pool house had to be open, airy, yet completely lock-able; and at the same time, flooded with light.

Steininger Designers drafted a building with modular large-surface glass panels which could be neatly glided to the side in order to open up two thirds of the 65 m² large pavilion, thereby unveiling a magnificent, unhindered view of the lake, on one side; and on the other, of the pool. One wall of the pool pavilion, where the sanitary facilities and a storage room were located, remained closed. On the southern facade, a mobile and decorative metal panel was attached which could easily be shifted in position to generate shade as required.

Not only the architecture dazzled the clients through its sheer lightness-of-being, also the interior pursued a timelessly elegant, modern concept. At very first glance, observers perceive a har-monious and, simultaneously, highly contrasting colour management, it jumps into view: the ceiling is kept dark in warm anthracite, the floor made bright by a carpet, and in between float earthy brown and grey hues. For Martin Steininger this was the melding of interior and exterior, a central goal of the design. And in this fashion, the ceramic material of the facade threads its way through Steininger’s ROCK kitchen module, over the fronts of the wine storage unit and refrigerator all the way to the core sanitary facilities.

That ceramic radiates a graininess resembling natural stone sprinkled with charming brown and white accents and continues boldly into the closed part of the pool house, combining nutwood and dark-toned glass which forms the wall of high cabinets by Steininger in utterly charming ways. Designer furniture by renowned manufacturers and a fireplace burning organic ethanol round out the project to perfection, ushering extraordinary atmosphere into the interior.