GRUBER BUILDS 4JUU

Since 2015, Karl Gruber’s Waldviertler architectural firm 4juu has been building with great sensitivity and often using wood from our factory in Sankt Marein.

Karl Gruber is really doing it: he recently completed a hotel in Anif, just outside the festival city of Salzburg; another one is currently under construction in Tyrol. There is also a holiday resort on Dachstein and a residential project in Millstatt in Carinthia. But Gruber isn’t stressed about it. On the contrary: “For me, one of the best things about being an architect is that you see something take concrete form that you previously had in your head and put on paper as an abstract plan.” The busy architect travels to his customers and construction sites from all over Austria not from Vienna or one of the other large cities in the country, but from the district town of Horn in the Waldviertel. The quiet, green stretch of land in the far north of the Alpine republic is Gruber’s original hometown. He returned there after completing his architecture studies in Vienna, especially with his favorite professor Helmut Richter: “Although everyone in Vienna told me: Stay here, you can’t possibly get into business in Horn.”

FOUNDER AND SPIRITUAL ENGINE OF 4JUU: KARL GRUBER // © 4JUU

LASTING TRACES

With his architectural office 4juu, founded in 2014, he has long since proven the doubters wrong and left a lasting mark on his place of work in Horn. In a team with Jakob Hofbauer and Philipp Schmid as well as office manager Eda Avci, Gruber has already implemented several striking projects in the town in just a few years: the local event hall, the VIP area in the SV Horn stadium, the expansion of the Horn scout home and various residential buildings, including a bold addition to a property in Bahngasse.

LIKE A SHIP IN THE GREEN: THE TERRACE OF THE VISITOR CENTER IN THE ERNSTBRUNN WILD PARK // © KATHARINA PASHKOVSKAYA

EXCELLENT!

In addition, there are many projects further away from Horn. Like several kindergartens, the renovation of the Mahlzig inn in Herzogenburg or the attractive visitor center of the Niedersulz open-air museum village.

4juu has also already built in the idyllic Kamptal: a pool house and a delicate-looking pedestrian walkway, despite the use of steel, which spans a stream bed in Rosenburg and, with its organic shape, fits into the ambience like a part of the landscape.

The recognition awarded for this at the Austrian Steel Construction Prize 2019 is not the first award for Gruber and his team: the architect has already received a nomination (2016), recognition (2012) and award (2012) at the Lower Austrian Timber Construction Prize. And this in such different categories as additions, conversions and renovations, or public and municipal construction.

THE GREEN THREAD

Although the 4juu portfolio is characterized by great design and functional diversity, which illustrates Gruber’s sensitivity for individual solutions, there is a unifying green thread beyond the clear shapes: a strong connection to nature. This is expressed in living green roofs as well as in a high proportion of wood. Sometimes Gruber uses entire tree trunk segments in their natural form as supporting elements.

I love wood not only because it can be used in so many different ways and always infects people with positive emotions, but also because it is very interesting in terms of building physics and offers many structural possibilities.

Karl Gruber, 4juu Architect

ANYTHING BUT MUSEUM-LIKE: ENTRANCE AND CONTACT POINT OF THE NIEDERSULZ MUSEUM VILLAGE // © KATHARINA PASHKOVSKAYA

DEBUT AT 14

Gruber does the static calculations himself – “I have the greatest respect for gravity” – as a certified civil engineer and graduate of the HTL in Krems. His parents give him the path there when they accept the obvious: that the boy is not cut out for work on his parents’ farm, built in 1855 – unless there is something to build or remodel. “I did my first conversion when I was 14 or 15,” Gruber remembers with a smile. “My parents had – as is common on many old farms – an oversized bedroom, while the living room was very cramped. I successfully got us to turn this around according to my plans.”

OUT OF PURE INTEREST

The fact that Gruber junior was born into planning and building can be seen not only in his boyish passion for constructing tree houses and huts, but also in his school grades: excellent in drawing, mathematics and physics, rather modest in all other subjects.

At the HTL in Krems, Gruber thrives academically. After graduating from high school, he joined a construction company. Knowing that “that couldn’t have been everything,” he enrolled at the architecture faculty in Vienna. “Without thinking about getting a diploma, I just attended the lectures that interested me.”

When, while sorting through the certificates, he realizes that he has almost finished the first part of his studies, he decides to go through with it – and, as a reward, to travel as much as possible after completing his studies.

PLAN FOR PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Consequently, the newly qualified engineer ended up in Australia with his future wife. He spent a quarter of a year gaining formative experience in an architectural office in Sydney: “We did projects in tropical Papua New Guinea, where European construction was not at all in demand. That’s when I learned to find out through conversation and observation what it was about and what needed to be done.” Although he is particularly fascinated by wooden construction using bamboo or hardwood, Gruber politely declines the offer to stay in Australia permanently. Instead, he orients himself back towards the Waldviertel. The return home is also one of the rural life of his childhood and youth.

OFFICE DECOR FROM MAREINER

Gruber does not settle on his parents’ farm but instead moves into an old farmhouse of his own. The wooden extension behind the historic facade marks the beginning of Gruber’s long-standing relationship with Mareiner. While searching for the right facade elements, the architect discovers them in the Mareiner catalog during a conversation with Martin Breitenberger (“we clicked immediately”) and places an order in Sankt Marein. This would be followed by several more orders: facade elements for the visitor center in Niedersulz, interior and exterior panels for kindergartens, Kebony decking for the Rosenburg footbridge, and wall panels for the interior design of a hotel in Anif, which has received countless compliments from guests. The sample boards have earned a permanent spot in the 4juu office: “They’ve become cherished decorative pieces.”

CABIN BUILDING LIKE IN THE OLD DAYS

In each of these projects, Gruber sees himself—much like in a medieval cathedral workshop—as part of a large community of skilled craftsmen who bring the given plans to life as equals, with mutual respect and appreciation. This was also the case with the WaldWildnisCamp in the Thayatal National Park, which Gruber built in collaboration with the park rangers. He drew on the cabin-building expertise of his childhood but with technical support he could only have dreamed of back then: “A mobile band saw that allowed us to cut trees from the forest into blocks right on site.”