EQUATION TO SOLVE

Investor`s needs: contemporary and energy efficient suburban house. Elegantly rural: not so badly designed as the low-quality architecture typical for Polish countryside of today but not a snob, sleek villa from popular journal, either. With an airy workshop for Hanka, a sculptor, and a spacious attic for a bunch of kids.  

Plot: difficult. Long, slightly sloping, narrow, stretched in the east-west direction, surrounded by access roads, facing a blind wall of the neighbour's house, 3 meters behind the northern border.

Solution: countryside + energy efficiency = extremly simple form with a optimal volume/surface ratio, without unnecessary details. One exception breaking this rule: the garage, sticking out of the main body - because it doesn't have to be so well insulated as the rest of the house. Together with the front pergola it creates a natural barrier from the main road, eliminating the need to build a fence from this side. Narrow plot = narrow functional layout, pulled back to the north and leaving maximum space for the southern garden. Narrow layout + energy efficiency = all communication situated along the northern wall and all the windows facing south. Only exception: the workshop with huge window in the northern side of the roof, providing the space with soft, indirect light. High and slender form of the pitch = appealing proportions + spacious attic without sloping ceilings at the window level, leaving air for additional mezzanines in the rooms.

REMOVING BORDERS

In order to strongly colligate garden with the house interior and reassure some privacy for the users, the south-west dip on the plot was surveyed. Rised, green terrace is limited by retaining walls, offset a bit from the borders. After planting them, they will substitude the traditional fence. Pedestrian entrance to the house leads from the south, through the garden, directly to the home center. East side of the plot, facing drive-in entry and workshop, has an open character. Privacy border from this side is determined by the house itself, broaden by the garage and pergola. 

USEFUL ORGANISM IN SUBURBAN ECOSYSTEM

House fulfills energy efficiency premise more than enough, not only by the optimal shape and location on the plot. Consequent arrangements of glazing, sufficient balance of gains and losses of heat, thermo-insulation layer design in details, machanical wentilation with heat recovery- these are the solutions, which reduce the energy consumption to the minimal level. Besides the battening made from raw cedarwood and local thermo-pinewood on the roof and elevations, project included the use of ventilated systems with prefabricated components from specialistic concrete, dedicated to collect and dissolve air contamination. Unfortunatly, the last element didn`t get to the realisation point due to the economic reasons, stepping aside for the clinker and fiber-cement tiles. 

SIMPLE = TRIVIAL?

House in Bojano is a manifesto against well known in Polish suburban areas quasi-elegant villas from catalogue. It doesn`t try to endear the village surroundings by too fancy form, plaster coating in pastel colour or sentimental detail. It gets along with the rural landscape with uncompromised sincerity of the simple form, followed by classic proportions and raw, natural but noble material finish. Made-to-measure, designed with energy efficency standards, with use of intelligent technologies- this outwardly simple building turns out to be surprisingly opened and hospitable member of the rural scenery at the closer look. 

PUBLICATIONS

Jakimi mówimy językami? Book by Krzysztof Ingarden

Sztuka od roku 1989 Book by Stefania Krzysztofowicz-Kozakowska

Mad White magazine, 3/2017 edition