Close to Home
In Bildstein and Mellau, Evi and Jürgen Haller have created two very different places to stay. What connects them is less a style than a way of doing things — through architecture, handcraft, food, family and an unusually personal kind of hospitality.
© Jessica Alice Hath
At Tempel 74, the distance between the architect’s office and the kitchen is only a few steps. On different visits, I have watched their children drift in and out, Evi disappear behind the counter or into the communal kitchen, Jürgen emerge from downstairs, somebody arrive with a delivery, another guest ask for a recommendation. At some point there is coffee. At another, something is put on the table.
It never feels like a performance of hospitality. Nobody seems to be trying particularly hard to be a host, which may be precisely why Evi and Jürgen Haller are so good at it. There is generosity here, but very little ceremony. They know their region intimately and are happy to share it. Who makes the cheese. Who built the window. Where to walk when you do not want to follow everybody else. Which architect to call. Where to eat. Who has started something interesting. And if a group needs feeding, Evi may simply end up at the stove herself.
Their children are part of this world too. So is Jürgen’s architecture office. So are the craftspeople and producers they have known for years. The result feels less like checking into accommodation than entering a network. And it began with an old house that belonged to Evi’s family.
The house that came first
The Mesmerhaus stands in Bildstein, directly opposite the monumental baroque pilgrimage church, in an ensemble so compact that church, village, garden and house seem almost to borrow space from one another. Its history reaches back more than two centuries according to the family’s current account. In 1905, Evi’s great-grandfather Franz Josef Böhler bought the house and set up his carpenter’s workshop there. He also worked as the church sacristan — Mesmer in the local dialect — which eventually gave the house its name. Evi still tells the family story that he received a loaf of bread each week for ringing the church bell several times a day.
Hospitality was already part of the family long before anyone used words such as hideaway or holiday architecture. Evi’s great-aunt Maria later rented out Fremdenzimmer, rooms for visitors, and kept a guestbook recording people who often returned and became friends.
By the time the house reached Evi, it needed more than cosmetic attention. The historical structure was partly dilapidated and heavily altered inside. Architect Christian Lenz was responsible for the planning through the submission stage; her husband Jürgen subsequently took on spatial design, execution planning and furniture design. Evi was the client and owner. The transformation retained the character of the exterior while making substantial changes inside: floor levels shifted, rooms opened up, the roof became inhabitable, and old fabric met oak, fir, glass and blackened steel. This distinction matters.
The Mesmerhaus is not an old house with a few contemporary chairs placed inside it. Nor is it a monument preserved so carefully that nobody can relax. Its history was taken seriously enough to be changed.
A home with a little more play
Of the two Haller houses, the Mesmerhaus is the more idiosyncratic one. There are only three apartments — Maria, Franz Josef and Ludovika — and each has a different relationship to the old structure. The smallest looks towards the church; another opens towards village, mountains and lake; upstairs, Ludovika spreads into the roof with the generosity of a private home rather than a holiday apartment.
That is also how I remember it. The large table. The expansive kitchen. The studio-like room beneath the roof. A fireplace sitting beneath the skylight. Rooms that seem to unfold from one another rather than line up along a hotel corridor. Balconies where the Bodensee suddenly appears beyond the landscape and makes a very convincing case for an aperitivo. There is more design here, more layering, more of the feeling that things have accumulated because somebody liked them.
And downstairs, Mesmers Stadel, the small shop in the barn, extends that domestic logic into things you can take home. Regional food, small objects, preserves and products sit alongside pieces that feel chosen rather than merchandised.
Step outside and the village takes over again. The church opposite. A walk to the little OXA-Lädele for everyday provisions. Dinner at the Gasthof Kreuz. A garden, a handful of houses and the wide view towards the lake. It is remarkable how much can exist within such a small radius. Almost everything, in fact.
From inheritance to a second house
“Without the Mesmerhaus, there would be no Tempel 74.” Evi and Jürgen have said this more than once. The Mesmerhaus showed them that people were interested not only in sleeping somewhere beautiful but in inhabiting architecture — and in understanding the culture that produced it. Guests began asking whether there was something similar closer to the Bregenzerwald itself.
Then an opportunity appeared in Mellau. Together with friends and neighbours, the Felder family, the Hallers acquired a plot at the small ensemble known as Tempel. The existing farmhouse was no longer considered viable for restoration. Instead of pretending otherwise, they replaced it. That fact is important because Jürgen is refreshingly unsentimental about old buildings. He believes in keeping good substance, but not because demolition has become a moral failure in itself. “If it is a Bregenzerwald house with a certain quality, then of course you try to preserve it,” he says. “But you also need a client who sees that.”Economics, structure and actual usefulness still matter.
At Tempel, that meant building new. One of the two houses reconstructs the language of the previous Bregenzerwälderhaus with box windows, shutters and shingles. The other takes the same regional vocabulary and loosens it: larger openings, a more abstract timber façade, a clearly contemporary reading. Between and below them sit reception, communal spaces and Jürgen’s planning office. There are ten apartments in total.
Rather than making the regional tradition picturesque, the project asks what still works. Proportion. Material. Shelter. The relationship between street, courtyard and house. The covered balcony. The smell and touch of timber. And, crucially, the knowledge required to put all of it together.
The people behind the wood
Tempel 74 is often photographed as architecture, but being there shifts the emphasis. The workmanship is almost more present than the design gesture. Nothing needs to shout. The rooms are clear and generous, the materials robust, the detailing precise. Regional timber was used throughout, and the trades were deliberately commissioned from within the region.
This is where Jürgen’s position within the Bregenzerwald becomes interesting. For him, the region is not an abstract pool of “local makers”. It is made up of people he actually knows. “I know the craft companies,” he tells me. “Here, you know everyone. If I call and ask whether I can come by, they say: sure.” It sounds casual. It is anything but. Those relationships create access to workshops, knowledge and people that cannot simply be purchased with a design brief. They also explain why architecture guests who stay at Tempel 74 often find themselves doing much more than looking at the building.
Jürgen takes groups through Mellau. They visit schools, housing projects or workshops. If somebody wants to understand windows, he knows whom to call. If an office is researching kindergartens, they can go and see several. Werkraum Bregenzerwald and the Vorarlberger Architektur Institut regularly form part of that wider network. Architecture here is not presented as a finished object. It becomes an introduction.
Evi's side of the architecture
If Jürgen opens doors into building culture, Evi tends to notice what happens after people have walked through them. The breakfast at Tempel 74 is a good example. It was not originally planned at all. They opened in December 2019. Three months later came the pandemic. “We had this forced pause,” Evi remembers. “And then we asked ourselves: what does the guest need when they come back? So we basically created breakfast from scratch.”
That decision led her deeper into the region's producers. Some never answered her enquiries. Others did rather more than that. Richard Dietrich sent not simply jam but Riebel muesli, chips, juice and schnapps. His enthusiasm impressed her as much as the products themselves. Harald Schobel became another long-term supplier with dried fruit and spirits. Martin Fink advises them on wine. Wolfgang Mätzler's Fairkocht eventually became an especially useful partner for a house where guests have their own kitchens and groups sometimes need feeding.
Fairkocht's jars now sit in the apartments, and its catering products are used for events.
“What is important to us is that we buy regionally,” Evi says simply. Even vegetables and sausages are often bought in Mellau; cheese comes through regional structures that in turn support the surrounding farms. The interesting part is that none of this has been built into a grand farm-to-table manifesto. It grew out of use. Breakfast was needed. Guests wanted something warm after skiing without going out for a four-course dinner. A group needed soup. Someone wanted good wine without Evi and Jürgen pretending to be sommeliers. Hospitality kept creating small problems, and the regional network kept offering answers.
Things that stay close
The same is true of smaller objects. A scent for an apartment, for example, sounds trivial until you have chosen one that half your guests dislike. Evi eventually arrived at herbal cushions by Himmelgrün. “The nice thing is that you only really smell them when you get close,” she says. “So they can never become too intense in the room.” They selected lavender, alpine herbs and stone pine. Guests began asking where they could buy them.
The same eye for small, useful details continues throughout Tempel 74. Susanne Kaufmann products sit in the bathrooms; glass vases by Fräulein Marie, made from reused wine bottles, appear around the house. Alongside food from Fairkocht and other regional producers, they form a loose collection of things whose makers never seem very far away.
This is to me the most convincing version of regionality at the Hallers' houses. Not a label. A sequence of small decisions:
Who makes this better than we could?
Who do we trust?
Who will pick up the phone?
What belongs here?
And what does a guest actually need?
Close enough to be personal
Between Mesmerhaus and Tempel 74 there are thirteen apartments. That already feels close to the limit for Evi. “We want a size we can still manage ourselves,” she says. “We want to be able to go to the guest ourselves. If you have five managers in between, it becomes impersonal and it is no longer authentic.”
This explains something I have found difficult to name on earlier visits. The places are very well designed, but their appeal does not come primarily from perfection. It comes from proximity. You see the family. You see Jürgen working. Evi knows what is in the breakfast basket. Children appear. Someone may be cooking. The office is downstairs.
A guest asks a question about a building and suddenly finds themselves talking to the person who designed the house they are sleeping in. That would disappear surprisingly quickly if the operation became much bigger. The Hallers know it. For now, they have no ambition to multiply the formula. The greater challenge, Evi says, is keeping the quality they already have.
More than a bed
What they do want to develop is something that has actually been happening informally for years. Architecture groups come to stay. Some are offices looking for ideas. Others are planners researching schools, housing or public buildings. Jürgen shows them around; Evi organises breakfast, dinner, visits and whatever else is needed.
Until now, much of that happened because somebody asked. They are beginning to turn it into a more deliberate offer. “A bed alone — even if it is a better-quality bed — is no longer enough,” Evi says. Her idea is simple: stay inside the architecture, meet the people who make it, eat well, visit workshops, follow whichever regional thread matters to the group. It seems to be the most logical evolution Tempel 74 could have. Not becoming a larger hotel.
Becoming a better doorway into the Bregenzerwald.
Two houses, two directions
The Mesmerhaus and Tempel 74 would be easy to reduce to the same formula. Wood. Architecture. Regional craft. Beautiful views. That would miss what makes them interesting.
The Mesmerhaus starts with inheritance. With Evi's family, an old workshop, former guest rooms, a church across the road and the decision to keep a house alive by changing it. Tempel 74 starts with a different question. How can you build new inside a village whose architecture already carries such a strong identity? How can guests be part of that place rather than simply look at it? How can an architect's office, holiday apartments, a communal room and family life coexist? One is more intimate, layered and playful. The other is clearer, more architectural, more explicitly about handcraft. Both leave space for the person staying there. And both work because Evi and Jürgen never seem particularly interested in keeping the experience inside their own walls.
They send you elsewhere.
To a carpenter.
To a cheesemaker.
To the Werkraum.
To the little shop in the village.
To a restaurant.
To a path they walk themselves.
It seems that is the real luxury of staying with people who are deeply rooted somewhere. They know there is no reason to keep the good things to themselves.
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The HALLER Cosmos
Hosts_Evi & Jürgen Haller
Homes_Mesmerhaus, Bildstein / Tempel 74, Mellau
Mesmerhaus client & owner_Evi Haller
Mesmerhaus planning_Christian Lenz / Jürgen Haller
Tempel 74 architecture_Jürgen Haller
Tempel 74 clients_Evi & Jürgen Haller / Gerhard, Kathrin & Angelika Felder
Mesmerhaus craft_Holzbau Sohm / Böhler Fenster / Valentin Winder / Bell and others
Food threads_Richard Dietrich / Harald Schobel / Martin Fink / Wolfgang Mätzler – Fairkocht
Objects & atmosphere_Himmelgrün / Fräulein Marie / Susanne Kaufmann
Architecture network_Werkraum Bregenzerwald / vai Vorarlberger Architektur Institut
Landscape_Bodensee from Bildstein / Kanisfluh from Mellau
Common denominator_personal presence
Further Threads
Werkraum Bregenzerwald, Andelsbuch
Follow Jürgen's craft network into the institution that has made collaboration between regional workshops and designers visible far beyond the valley.
Fairkocht / Wolfgang Mätzler
“Stories in jars”: a practical answer to contemporary hospitality, rooted in regional food and preservation rather than restaurant ceremony.
Dietrich Vorarlberger Kostbarkeiten / Richard Dietrich
Riebel, fruit, juice and the kind of producer Evi values as much for commitment as for the product itself.
The baroque pilgrimage church directly opposite the Mesmerhaus; almost impossible to separate from the house's history, name and sense of place.
OXA-Lädele, Bildstein
Everyday village infrastructure within walking distance: useful precisely because it is not an attraction.
Gasthof Kreuz, Bildstein
A reason to remain in the village for dinner rather than turn the Mesmerhaus into a self-contained destination.
Vorarlberg glass objects, including vases made from reused wine bottles; a small material thread from the houses into contemporary regional product culture.
Nazes Hus, Mellau
The historic neighbour in the Tempel ensemble and a reminder that the new buildings are part of a much older village fabric.
