Furnishing a Second Home Between Vienna and New York, Ready on Arrival

What makes a second home different

A second home is not a smaller main home. It follows another rhythm. The apartment stands empty for weeks, then it is lived in intensively, often with jet lag, often with visitors. In between, nothing should happen that cannot be watched from a distance.

That changes almost every planning decision. In a main home a plant may stand on the windowsill, a linen curtain may fade a little in the sun, the fridge is always full. In a pied-à-terre the apartment has to work well when nobody is there, and in the first hours after arrival, without shopping and without unpacking.

A pied-à-terre is, literally, a foot on the ground: a small, well-equipped city apartment that you live in regularly but not permanently. In New York the term is firmly established; in Vienna such apartments have been growing in number for years.

A second home is a success if, after unlocking the door, you put the kettle on before you unpack a single suitcase.

To get there, we do not start with style. We start with you.

The guiding question stays the same: how do you want to live?

With a second home too, the beginning is daily life. For Ms K. we played through a typical week in Vienna during the initial consultation.

She lands early in the morning, is in the apartment by nine and sleeps until midday. In the afternoon she meets friends, and in the evening she likes to cook for three or four people. Two days a week she works with New York, usually from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. because of the time difference. At weekends her niece sometimes comes and stays the night.

Very concrete requirements follow:

• A bedroom that really goes dark, even at twelve noon.
• A small but fully fledged kitchen for dinners with guests.
• A workspace with good light and a good camera angle for video calls in the evening.
• A place for guests to sleep that does not get in the way day to day.
• Storage for a second wardrobe, so the suitcase stays light.

This list is not about style. It is the framework on which everything creative rests later. And the first test of that framework is a single moment: the arrival.

Arriving without unpacking

The most important moment in the life of a second home is arrival. It decides whether the apartment feels like a home or a holiday flat.

So we plan a deliberate basic kit that always stays:

1. A complete second wardrobe for the season of your most frequent stays, plus a compartment for basics that are always needed.
2. Bed linen and towels in two sets, so the bed is freshly made on arrival and can be changed before departure.
3. A stock of long-life staples in a well-planned kitchen drawer: tea, coffee, oil, salt, pasta, tinned goods.
4. Chargers and adapters in fixed places, including sockets with USB right at the bed and at the workspace.
5. An arrival spot in the hallway: a shelf for suitcases, a hook for the jacket, a compartment for keys and post.

This kit needs space. In 68 square metres, a good storage concept is not a luxury but a precondition. For Ms K., a floor-to-ceiling fitted wardrobe in the hallway takes the second wardrobe, the suitcases and a small household area. Our joinery workshop Tischlerkultur builds such pieces to the millimetre, in the Viennese carpentry tradition that has carried the family since 1935.

Imagine the first morning: you open the hallway wardrobe, your own coat hangs where it should, and the suitcase never leaves the shelf. A kit like this only works if the surfaces survive the weeks of absence in between.

Materials that can cope with absence

An apartment that stands empty for weeks puts special demands on surfaces and textiles. Sun streams in unhindered, nobody airs the rooms, dust settles. Yet the apartment should feel warm and personal, not like a hotel room.

One subject deserves particular attention: fading. Natural fibres, oiled timber and some kinds of leather change under UV light. In an occupied apartment this happens evenly and unnoticed. In an empty one with the curtains open, shadow edges appear. We therefore recommend darkening the rooms before you leave or planning an automatic control. Which surfaces are truly insensitive in the long run is covered in our article on easy-care surfaces.

What looks after the apartment while you are away?

Technology that keeps watch from afar

For a second home, a well-thought-out smart home you cannot see makes particular sense. It is not about blinking gadgets, but about a few reliable functions.

• Remote control of the heating, so the apartment is warm on arrival and not heated needlessly while you are away.
• Water sensors under the sink, washing machine and washbasin that send a message in the event of a leak. With a shut-off valve if required.
• Blinds or curtains on a timer, which regulate light and sun protection and suggest an occupied apartment.
• Stable Wi-Fi that works without a restart when you return after three months.

It matters that everything can also be operated without an app. Your niece, the property management (Hausverwaltung) or a trusted person who looks in on the apartment must be able to switch on lights and heating without instruction. You can read more about this approach in our article on a smart home you don't see.

What doing nothing costs. Without a plan, a second home becomes a place you tidy up before you can live in it. Every trip starts with an hour of airing, shopping and searching for the adapter, and the apartment you bought for arriving behaves like a holiday let. The longer that goes on, the less you are there.

Now to the harder question: how can one signature hold two such different cities?

Two cities, one signature

Anyone with a second home often lives between two places built very differently. A Viennese Gründerzeit house has high rooms, box-type windows, double-leaf doors and herringbone parquet. A New York prewar apartment often has lower ceilings, radiators beneath the windows and an entirely different handling of light. A loft in Tribeca, in turn, has steel columns and open floor space.

The temptation is to furnish both the same way. That rarely works. A Viennese Altbau styled like a Manhattan loft loses its charm, and vice versa.

What we aim for is a shared signature, visible in a few recurring elements:

• The same timber for built-ins and furniture, such as an oiled oak that appears in both apartments.
• A related colour palette, adapted to the light in each place.
• A light fitting that stands in both apartments, for example a floor lamp beside the reading chair. How light fittings are integrated into a plan is explained in our article on lighting design.
• The same habits in the layout: the bed faces the window, the reading lamp is on the left, the coffee machine is in the same place in the kitchen.

These repetitions are subtle, yet they help the body arrive faster after the flight. The method behind it is in our article on the material concept as a common thread.

What is different in New York

Anyone renovating in New York meets other procedures than in Vienna. In many Manhattan residential buildings every renovation needs the approval of the co-op board or building management, often with separate agreements, proof of insurance and fixed working hours. Electrical appliances and light fittings must be suitable and approved for the American mains supply. That also applies to European-made furniture with integrated lighting. We clarify these points with the responsible parties on site before planning begins.

In Vienna the questions are different: the consent of the co-owners under the Austrian Condominium Act (Wohnungseigentumsgesetz), a building notification or building permit for certain interventions, the rules of the house. An overview is in our article on permits for Altbau conversions in Vienna.

Two cities, two sets of rules, and you in neither of them at the time. How do you plan all this from far away?

Planning from a distance

Most people who furnish a second home are not on site while it is planned. Ms K. was in Vienna twice in the six months between purchase and moving in, each time for a week. The rest ran through video calls, photos, sample packages and a shared folder of plans.

For that to work, you need clear structures:

1. One fixed contact for all questions, from concept to handover.
2. Fixed call times that respect the time difference. Between Vienna and New York it is usually six hours.
3. Decision documents with images and samples, which arrive by post and not only on screen.
4. Regular photo documentation of the building site, so you see progress without flying.
5. Concentrated on-site meetings for the decisions that can only be made in the room: colour samples, lighting mood, furniture placement.

At Richard Atelier planning and execution belong together, with Tischlerkultur as our own manufacturing partner, so many rounds of coordination between planner and craftspeople fall away. What this means in concrete terms is described in our article on planning and execution from a single source. How our team works is shown on the Team page.

Distance, then, is no obstacle. Size might be a question, though.

Small, but complete

A pied-à-terre is usually smaller than a main home. That is an opportunity, not a restriction. Small apartments demand clear decisions, and clear decisions make rooms calm.

For Ms K. the kitchen is only 2.40 metres long yet fully equipped: an induction hob with integrated extractor, a compact oven with steam function, a fridge with its own freezer compartment. It opens onto the living space, because that is where she cooks for guests. How to plan a small kitchen that feels large is shown in our article on the small kitchen, thought big.

The guest bed is a wide daybed in the study with a drawer beneath for linen. By day it is a sofa for reading, by night a full-sized bed for her niece. The desk is positioned so that behind the screen you see a calm wall of books and not a bed.

Picture an evening in October: onions in the pan, friends at the counter, the New York call finished an hour ago and the laptop closed in the study. That is the apartment she is buying with this plan.

The goal for an apartment like Ms K.'s fits into one sentence: never again to feel like a visitor in Vienna.