Miller House

The Miller House is in Hötting, a district of Innsbruck, on a step in the terrain in front of the Nordkette mountain range. The exceptional location of the site offers a view to the west that is prototypical for Innsbruck and that cannot be blocked by new building: this view extends into the upper Inn Valley, framed on the right by the dramatic rock edge of the Martinswand.

We are talking here about the following lines of movement: coming from the north, entering the site at its north-east corner and extending south-west in order to capture the view referred to but also to receive sunlight; from the south-east corner of the site, rising from the level of the terrain, above and past the driveway and extending along the single-flight staircase to the first floor towards the north-west to the equally imposing view of the massif of the Nordkette range; from this spatial diagonal others branch off, which, on the first floor too, fan out from south-west to west, striving towards the view and the sun.

One could think here of a thermodynamic process, of flows that are initially laminar, later turbulent, less dense (the spatial zones) and highly dense (the building envelope and storeys): walls, floors and ceilings are understood first as a continuum which is then differentiated by this process in order, on the one hand, to acquire the three characteristics just mentioned and, on the other, to generate those openings described in standard terminology as glazing, windows and ceiling openings into voids.

That, in the process, a powerful building volume is created, like a big-cat with its muscles tensed just before it leaps, and enormous demands are made on the structural design, is, of course, self-evident.

And yet the building emanates calm and contemplation through the generosity and serenity of the lines and the reduction of the materials to just three: anthracite grey metal (aluminium and steel), white render, and sedimentary stone thousands of years old (giallo dorato).

A further energy field on the site was activated to provide heat: thebuilding supplies itself with geothermal energy from two probes about120 metres deep.