The balcony is both an exit and an entrance, a threshold and a stage. It leads out of the living space without leaving it entirely, and mediates between closeness and distance. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the balcony becomes the setting for a declaration of love. At Tillysburg Castle, too, a wedding forms the starting point for a new balcony – in a place that itself becomes a stage every year during the Tillysburg Castle Festival.

History and Brief

Tillysburg Castle is situated in the municipality of St. Florian in the district of Linz-Land and is a listed building. The present-day castle was built between 1633 and 1645 and was remodelled in the early 18th century. It is regarded as a building marking the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque period. Four wings enclose a rectangular inner courtyard, whilst four square corner towers define its austere, geometric exterior. The castle is surrounded by a park with mature trees.

For a flat on the first floor, a private outdoor space was created on the east façade – a balcony intended as a wedding gift. What initially appeared to be a routine building project took on a new dimension at this location, raising a fundamental architectural question: how can a balcony be integrated with the historic building?

The design responds with a distinct form that mediates between the flat, the castle and the castle grounds. It draws close to the flat’s exit window whilst maintaining a distance from the historic façade. The new structure is not supported by the castle. The balcony stands freely within the grounds.

Concept – A comedy in three acts

The two towers of the east façade are flanked by a third, contemporary vertical form that rises from the landscape. The dense yet permeable latticework echoes the soaring form of the towers, whilst translating their massiveness into a delicate and open structure.

Three spatial relationships define the concept: distance protects the existing structure; proximity establishes the connection; and an embrace shapes the space.

The freely meandering platform breaks away from the orthogonal rigour of the castle. Starting from the exit window, it extends into the garden, narrowing and widening as it goes, turning towards the east and west, and wrapping itself around a mighty old tree. This creates different areas for spending time: light and shaded, open and enclosed, facing the castle and oriented towards the garden.

It is precisely from these contrasts that the connection between the existing structure and the new form emerges: from mass and delicacy, orthogonal order and free-flowing lines, historic façade and living landscape.

Implementation

A dense array of slender bars made of ribbed concrete reinforcing steel supports the free-form balcony slab. The bars pierce through the three-centimetre-thick steel plate and continue upwards. The supporting structure and the fall protection system merge into a single, continuous vertical structure, into which the walkable surface is threaded.

The free-form panel segments were laser-cut and prefabricated, threaded into the truss structure and spot-welded together to form a continuous balcony area. The steel remains untreated. Its surface changes under the influence of the weather. Time becomes a visible part of the architectural appearance.

Depending on the vantage point, the slender bars coalesce into an almost closed contour or reveal views of the castle façade, trees and park. Above, a balcony emerges between the tree canopy, the landscape and the castle; below, a garden space filtered through the bars. In the shifting daylight, the latticework, branches and façade overlap to create a dynamic interplay of light and shadow.