Located in Vienna's 14th borough, a neighborhood known for its vast green space, including a dense forest called Vienna Woods, Austrian architectural firm JOSEP designed a minimalist home to fit in with the surrounding landscape. Built for a rock climbing couple, the environmentally friendly house equipped with large windows sits nestled into a hill with a panoramic view of the city below.
The home, clad in wood panels and crowned with an asymmetrical gable roof, was designed with "low-tech" elements: The team cut out unnecessarily complicated technologies to create the pared-down aesthetic. The firm's simple principles for the home (which include functionality, usability, and maintenance) can be found everywhere in the design — from the local construction materials to the plant fiber insulation to the space-saving storage options.
After interning at Dwell magazine in San Francisco, Kate began writing about arts, design and culture for other national publications. She is based in Los Angeles and San Francisco.