How an old outbuilding became a writer?s workshop, a garden room for guests, and a children?s paradise. The workmen from the village wanted to tear down the black shed from 1934: draughty, weather-beaten and worm-eaten it was, they said. But we liked this black outbuilding of the mansard-roof house in the Vienna Woods that we had just renovated in a radical yet respectful manner.

© Andreas Buchberger

Architects: Sue Architekten

Location: Wienerwald, Austria

Area: 30.0 sqm

Project Year: 2016

Photographs: Andreas Buchberger

Structural Engineering: DI Margarete Salzer, Vienna

© Andreas Buchberger

How an old outbuilding became a writer?s workshop, a garden room for guests, and a children?s paradise. The workmen from the village wanted to tear down the black shed from 1934: draughty, weather-beaten and worm-eaten it was, they said. But we liked this black outbuilding of the mansard-roof house in the Vienna Woods that we had just renovated in a radical yet respectful manner.
Plan

The special appeal of this project lay in the rediscovery of these old outbuildings in the shadows of the Vienna Woods villas. Back in the 1930s, few people could afford a basement, let alone a garage. And so they built their own sheds to store wood, raise rabbits or boil laundry, which was then hung up to dry...