Private Clinic in Anif / Steiner Architecture

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Red insulating concrete dominates the composition. It pushes the technology of reusable concrete further. But it also provokes its notably cautious and unadventurous architectural surroundings with its cheeky hue and rough finish maculated with stains, holes, and traces of wooden formwork. Known in German as Dämmbeton, insulating concrete has a certain degree of breathability. It changes colors subtly depending on air humidity, in addition to every material’s common response to varying seasonal sunlight. And so the building seems to change moods constantly.But the red concrete slithers into the chiefly off-white and pastel halls and consulting rooms of the clinic through the roof. It's a leitmotif. It reminds one of the heavy hull, of porosity, of things slightly (more) primitive, in the face of the surgical cleanliness of modern hospitals.On one the staircase to the apartment above is straight, on the other the staircase is spiral. The circle-shaped, glass-walled reception articulates the clinic on the ground floor. It's a deliberate move to scale down the building and offers a contrast to the heavy red concrete and a break in the serrated roofline.Though the project is composed of two recognizable volumes articulated by a circular reception hall, it is divided top-bottom, rather than left-right. The whole ground floor is the clinic for patients with respiratory illnesses, and the whole first floor is given to two apartment units. The two main volumes are not identical. One is larger than the other, and the window shape and placement are similar but not the same.Upstairs in the apartment units one gets the peaceful ambience of off-whites and pastels, but without the anxiety of medical procedures. Now it's a kitchen island, not an operating table. Here the views are more expansive, the natural light is vaster. And through the openings, on the extra thick window reveals, the ever-present red concrete.Text description provided by the architects.Besides the task of designing a clinic, finding an idiom that was fitting to this town on the outskirts of Salzburg was the primary challenge here. The result is still a little raffish. With its valley roofs, the building fulfills its responsibility to the neighborhood, with which it just about shares a vocabulary. It still feels warehouseish, slightly vapid from certain angles. Undemonstrative here and there. One of the facades looks like a toy face with a winking eye. On the opposite side, the staircase suggests teeth.