In Conversation

The Art of Holding Back: An Interview with Martin Gruber

The closer you get to the essence of a place, the less need there is for grand gestures. Martin Gruber talks about the power of the human touch, the beauty of reduction, artistic experimentation and an architecture that grows out of a close connection with nature.

by Britta Krämer and Ulrich Stefan Knoll in October 2026

Hello Martin – lovely to see you again! What are you working on at the moment?    

Mono is curr­ently taking shape in the Ahrntal valley. When you stand in front of the site, there is initially very little to see: two walls lie in the mountain meadow, with a space opening up between them. The house is set into the slope, its two glazed sides looking up and down the valley. I like this simple gesture. It doesn’t try to compete with the land­scape. The longer you stand there, the less certain you become where the archi­tecture begins and the place ends.

Perhaps this approach also comes from the old retaining walls you find ever­y­where around here. They were built because they were necessary. Nobody thought of them as archi­tecture at the time. Over the decades, they have become part of the land­scape. Their beauty comes from how natural and self-evident they seem. It is pre­cisely this sense of natu­ralness that I look for in new houses too.

At the beginning of Sep­tember, we also opened Living Lands in Biberwier. A former campsite was dis­mantled and trans­formed into an undu­lating garden, flanked by an “inha­bi­table garden wall”. Its form is derived from the Loisach river, which flows past the site. The result is an organic archi­tecture that nevert­heless remains very calm and clear.

The idea behind this reversal of the building was very simple: the longing for a shel­tered interior. An interior like a garden, almost like a little paradise.

What shapes your fun­da­mental archi­tec­tural approach? How do you address a project?

Let me start the other way round. In the end, it has to be good. HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE selects archi­tecture of genuine quality. Taken as a whole, this approach creates trust and makes a valuable con­tri­bution to archi­tecture, inspiring people and drawing them in. 

That is the aspi­ration I bring to every project. First, I take the time to look closely, and then I try to develop an affection for the place, the existing fabric and the people involved. App­lying this attitude makes it easier to find the starting point for a project – and that process is often rooted in an artistic approach.

For me, art is the attentive, the meti­culous element, some­thing that goes beyond the ordinary and the necessary … often some­thing rather dif­ficult to find – simply art. And usually it involves an ideal. I’m looking for a beauty that is beyond dispute, that natural beauty that can be intui­tively reco­g­nised and understood by as many people as pos­sible. A beauty without a mora­lising edge.

When I’m unsure about a design decision, I try to think of archi­tecture more as a film than as a plan. Life, after all, con­sists inher­ently of dynamic states. Needs change. The sur­roun­dings change with the seasons. I like trying to identify pat­terns in all of this and taking a stance. I also like tran­si­tions and inter­me­diate states – perhaps that’s pre­cisely why I like building sites.

When a project really moves me, it feels like a film of a life. I sud­denly become very serious, and I become more aware of ever­y­thing. I ask myself whether I have put enough feeling and love into it. Not just love of detail – that too – but an overall sense of atten­ti­veness, respon­si­bility and goodwill.

The role of the human element as a central force is very important to me. It starts with the client, whom I some­times agree with too readily. But I also often give in because I trust that the concept is still strong enough. And so I some­times give the craft­speople a bit more freedom, once they under­stand the concept. That creates some­thing like passion and, from there, a kind of fri­endship. That’s roughly the atmo­sphere on my building sites.

Inci­den­tally, as a young architect I always regarded this wil­lingness to give in as a weakness; now I see it more as some­thing that is simply part of who I am. Ulti­m­ately, it’s about trans­forming that mutual trust into beauty. Because archi­tecture is very static and designed for the very long term, ever­y­thing has to be cali­brated with enormous fore­sight – to the best of one’s know­ledge and belief.

Do you work mainly on your own, or do you have a team?

The design for a project grows from within, so initially that’s me, one hundred per cent. I used to have six employees. Over time, they all set up on their own. I now work with some of them on a free­lance basis, as well as with other young archi­tects. Everyone has their par­ti­cular strengths: getting a plan approved locally, for example, or coor­di­nating with engi­neers on fire safety and cadastral matters. An entire orchestra always comes tog­ether, and I see being able to design as the greatest pri­vilege. But of course, taken as a whole, it’s cer­tainly not a one-man show.

On your website, you yourself write: “Building also means knowing when to hold back”. Would it be fair to say that – also given your limited man­power – you are par­ti­cu­larly sel­ective about which pro­jects you actually take on?

I like to look at every building project. But before any planning or building begins, each project is first and foremost a fresh start – with a new place, a new client and a new brief. The first thing this requires is a creative ana­lysis of what is already there. Nothing needs to be drawn at this stage; I simply want to pause. It is essential to give yourself enough time during this phase to ask the right ques­tions before looking for answers. After all, you have to want to find some­thing before you can start looking for it.

Ana­lysis is fol­lowed by syn­thesis: usually five or six design ideas that I weigh up against one another – and that is some­thing I actually do on my own. After­wards, I like to sit down with an older local resident and the craft­speople. And, in my mind, Pro­fessor Volker Giencke or Oscar Nie­meyer are always sitting on my shoulder too, testing my ideas for legi­bility, sim­plicity and sub­jective taste. This is the phase in which the idea has to pass the test of reality before the next steps can follow.

You said that you never like your archi­tecture to compete with nature. How exactly do you achieve that? Does it already happen during this con­tem­plative phase?   

Yes. The spirit of the place and nature as both inspi­ration and the mother of all things are essential aspects. There is also a spi­ritual dimension to nature. With Living Lands, there was a moment when I found myself thinking of Hesse’s Sid­dhartha and of how he looks into the stream, simply observing the water. I firmly believe that the closer a project is to nature, the more coherent it is – because people often like to argue about archi­tecture and beauty, but they don’t argue about nature.

Ever­y­thing in nature is beau­tiful – even the desert is beau­tiful. If you really engage with it, at some point you realise that there is nothing in nature that feels wrong. And you start to notice the details. We archi­tects should practise this way of seeing things too. My father might be standing next to me, for example, and say: “Look, the swallows don’t have any puddles left to provide the mud they need to build their nests.” Mean­while, some archi­tec­tural project for the design of a public square has just won an award – ever­y­thing is perfect, except there aren’t any puddles left. That wakes me up and brings me back down to earth.

Staying with nature: if you browse through the comments about Freiform, your own holiday home, you come across descrip­tions such as “Nature Obser­vatory” or “not designed as a house, but as an organic sculpture”. Was that your intention when you designed it?

I’m happy to admit that some­times the hand moves faster than the mind and I couldn’t pos­sibly have thought all of it through in advance. Freiform involved a lot of expe­ri­ments that hap­pened to work. The basic idea was to place fur­niture in a meadow and wrap a loop around it to keep resi­dents warm. And rather than posi­tioning the whole thing straight across the slope, I set it at a slight angle so that you can look both uphill and downhill. Freiform reflects a great deal of who I am as a person.

It was also exciting because it was the first project where I was both client and architect. Natu­rally, that led to some enormous argu­ments with myself. But at a certain point, there was the freedom and energy for that sweeping gesture – and it still makes me breathe deeply today. It’s won­derful to see the impact archi­tecture can have.

We’ve had the oppor­tunity to expe­rience Freiform our­selves. The pre­sence of nature is all-encom­passing, while the archi­tecture has a soothing sense of natu­ralness.

Thank you for the com­pliment! This is reflected in many of the comments in the guestbook, and they also make it clear that the archi­tecture quite obviously works without an ins­truction manual. Many guests stay in bed for a very long time because they simply can’t tear them­selves away from the ever-changing views!

Alongside its strong tactile quality, Freiform – like many of your other pro­jects – is striking for its many small design details. Do you design these yourself?  

For me, a concept requires you to carry the building through from beginning to end. Not with the per­fection of industry or product design, but with a more archaic tac­tility. My wife and I, for example, cut the recesses for the lights our­selves and then simply wedged the fit­tings into place. When you enjoy getting involved in the making yourself, you can feel the idea merging with the act of doing. In my view, that is the most honest form of com­mu­ni­cation. More spe­ci­fi­cally, we didn’t want to hang designer lamps there, because they could hang any­where. For us, it was about light and about not obs­tructing the view.

In any case, I think we have far too much respect for white walls or perfect floors. When I saw Niemeyer’s felt-tip sketches on white walls – some­thing nor­mally only small children are allowed to do – I found it impressive. The human being is ele­vated and the wall becomes less important. That’s how it should be. 

Just as with my wooden sculp­tures, some of which are charred, I even­tually plucked up the courage to work on the walls too, using, for example, soot-covered gloves. Of course, I asked myself beforehand: am I really allowed to do this? And what happens if it goes wrong? But even­tually I thought: the house belongs to me, not the other way round. Once you’ve taken that risk and then see and feel what happens, it is some­thing entirely dif­ferent from hanging a picture on a white wall. It affects you in a com­pletely dif­ferent way.

So this is the applied attitude you men­tioned earlier, which you practise in both archi­tecture and art?

Yes. These tests of courage and exer­cises in the ana­logue realm – that is, an app­re­ciation of the ori­ginal with all the ele­ments of chance, and even the pos­si­bility of failure – require you to expe­riment and to accept that you can never fully control the process.

With houses, I don’t like making mistakes; there is too much respon­si­bility involved. With sculp­tures, on the other hand, I’m free. While my father is very prag­matic and pri­marily sees the calo­rific value of a log of wood, I try to coax a spirit out of the wood. Not ever­y­thing has to be perfect – quite the opposite. Figu­ration already feels rest­rictive to me. You have to give the viewers the freedom to see and dis­cover some­thing for them­selves. Despite all the practice I’ve had by now, it remains a very indi­vidual process. And a very exciting one!

This brings us back to the art of holding back, doesn’t it?

Exactly. The essential question you have to answer every single time is: how far do I go, and when do I say, “It’s finished now”? You can “over­design” a piece, after all. So you must be in touch with yourself and trust your instincts. Reason alone can’t do it. Par­ti­cu­larly now, in an age of AI and robotics domi­nated by algo­rithms, this genuine act of creating with a warm heart is espe­cially important to me as a coun­ter­ba­lance.

Since much of your work is set in the moun­tains, I presume that reduction plays a par­ti­cu­larly vital role there.

A building always trans­forms a place too; there is an interplay between the two. So in sen­sitive land­scapes such as the Alps, it isn’t simply about the spirit of the place itself. It is also very much about behaving appro­priately, exer­cising res­traint and paying par­ti­cular attention to the context. Because every inter­vention also gives rise to a spirit of the building itself.

Building is always a public matter and the­r­efore a visible respon­si­bility. From a phy­sical point of view, there is a certain indif­fe­rence down on the plain, whereas the moun­tains are defined by their horizons and their rela­ti­onship with gravity and the­r­efore require a dif­ferent approach.

With Anders, you made a very clear statement when you decided to downsize what had been a hotel with a large number of beds. In other pro­jects too, you have not only held back in your own inter­ven­tions but actively pro­posed reduction and scaling back.

Apart from the fact that the banks were somewhat anxious about the future at the time and COVID also played a part, in the case of the anders suites, I sug­gested to the owner that he should return to the very essence of hos­pi­tality.

When tourism first began to take off in our area 40 or 50 years ago, people simply wel­comed visitors into their homes, without any con­cepts or mar­keting. There was simply a certain goodwill towards guests – or “strangers”, as they were still called back then. You gave them a bed and let them sit at the table with you. That was some­thing a family could manage in those days without making huge invest­ments, taking on debt or needing employees. It was all much smaller and more modest than it is today.

This down­sizing at anders meant that there was once again more time for the guests. Sud­denly, even the chan­ter­elles they pick them­selves are enough for everyone again. And so, in the evening, the host sits with the guests, perhaps over a glass of wine, and once again has time to spare. That’s a tre­mendous quality for everyone involved.

With your pro­jects such as Mono or Nidum, one gets the impression that you have taken your sen­sitive approach to place and land­scape to yet another level. You yourself have described this – very aptly, we think – as “dis­ap­pearing through design”.

Con­ceptual design is about essence. With Mono, we designed using archi­tec­tural ele­ments that were already present on the site, thereby redis­co­vering the everyday in the process.

Instead of auto­ma­ti­cally directing the view downhill, we opened up views both up and down the valley. This allowed the project to dis­appear from view from the road while still opening the house to nature to the south and north.

Nidum, on the other hand, is a private house. The owner actually wanted a sort of copy of Freiform, which of course I didn’t do (chuckles). I also had to tell him that I wouldn’t have time for another six months. At that point, I assumed that would be the end of it. But Marco called again exactly six months later. And then I began exploring the pos­si­bi­lities offered by local craft­smanship.

The result is a pre­fa­bri­cated timber structure that was assembled in a workshop in South Tyrol and then, so to speak, “planted” on the site. The angled wall is a refe­rence to anders, alt­hough here it wasn’t rea­lised in a curved form.

As you can see, I don’t even like right angles in the ver­tical. I find this incli­nation more pleasant. A backrest is slightly inclined too, after all.

What other prin­ciples are par­ti­cu­larly important to you?

In my view, we should – or perhaps better, we could – be content with much less and app­re­ciate and enjoy simple things more. These days, design is often addicted to the wow effect, and in politics it is the extremes that prevail.

When I look at my parents, for example, at the simple life they led and how bene­volent and positive they always were towards ever­y­thing around them, I become con­scious of this beau­tiful, con­tented middle ground. Humanity, dili­gence and the idea that it is enough to app­re­ciate simple, everyday things for their very ordi­na­riness. Meta­pho­ri­cally speaking, not ever­y­thing needs to have rough edges.

The element of sur­prise that we create by ques­tioning the everyday is entirely suf­fi­cient. All it takes is passion and a delight in the little things. I believe in the soft side of life.

You mean that things find their own form, much like the organic shapes in your archi­tecture – emerging from the flow and the process because you are able to embrace what the context offers you and are pre­pared to fit in?

That puts it per­fectly – that could almost be a quote from me!

I’m con­vinced that we arrive at much better solu­tions when we listen to one another. Of course, ours is a tech­nical pro­fession … but for me, feeling, the human element, mutual app­re­ciation and passion are the decisive factors. Trust as an applied attitude, so to speak.

Martin, thank you very much for talking to us!

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Martin Gruber is a free­lance architect from Brixen, South Tyrol. He lives and works with his family on a farm in Ver­dings (Freiform), where he also creates wooden sculp­tures.
During his career as a sportsman (run-off-track luge vice-world champion in 1999/2000), Martin Gruber studied archi­tecture in Vienna, Inns­bruck, New York and Venice. In 2001, he founded his studio and has been working as a free­lance architect both at home and abroad ever since.
Driven by the con­viction that every era, every place and every person pos­s­esses its own inherent beauty, Martin Gruber works with mini­malist forms and seeks to reveal this beauty through essential design. In doing so, he leaves suf­fi­cient scope for the viewer’s inter­pre­tation, enabling a highly per­sonal per­ception of his pro­jects and works, so that a strong sense of trust in sub­jec­tively beau­tiful archi­tecture and art can be fos­tered.

Interview: The interview was con­ducted by Britta Krämer and Ulrich Stefan Knoll.

Image credits: Martin Gruber © Kathie McK­noulty (Titelbild); Mono © Martin Gruber (1–3, 35/36); Living Lands © Martin Gruber (4/5); Natur­pan­oramen und ‑stim­mungen © Martin Gruber © Tobias Kaser (6–9, 18, 23–25, 41); Freiform © Martin Gruber © Tobias Kaser (10–16, 26); Skulp­turen © Elisa Cap­pellari © Kathie McK­noulty (17, 19–22); Anders Suites © Tobias Kaser © Martin Gruber (27–34); Nidum © Martin Gruber (37–40)