Goodnight, Vienna

Is that your idea of the perfect night in? Austrian architects Delugan_Meissl think so, and they've designed themselves the perfect physical form for it.

One of the features of the husband-and-wife team's self-build penthouse is a bed cantilevered in front of an unbroken panorama of the Viennese skyline. Now that's home entertainment.

The Ray House is perched on top of a drab 1960s office block that it so upstages, it's almost as though it comes with its own six-storey plinth. It may be brazenly sophisticated, but the design concept was simple enough: start with a flat rectangular box, slash it along the edges, then pull it open.

Less straightforward was getting the design to conform to the city's building code. Since, technically, this was a loft extension, traditional rules applied, such as a 45° roof pitch. But with some "elastic interpretation", Delugan_Meissl was able to be duly deferential to the surrounding roofscape.

The elegant ribbons of the aluminium facade sweep around load-bearing glazing and then inside the apartment to shape the interior. The architects like to think of the bed and bookshelves and other pieces of furniture as extensions of the facade. Everything seems to flow from the outside inwards, from transparent front to transparent back – making it as streamlined and sexy as a 1960s sci-fi film set.