Upon receiving first prize in an invited competition, Enota, the Slovenia-based architecture firm, shared with us their project, Podjunska House. More images and architect’s description after the break.
The Podjunska residential house is located in a quiet urban area of individual houses. It is situated on a corner inbound plot; two sides opening toward the street, the other two to the neighboring buildings. The location itself does not provide direct links to high quality urban ambiances, but rather opens up to the north towards the beautiful views of the Kamnik Alps. The facility consists of two completely separate housing units for a family and one the grandparents with shared underground parking. Despite of the location, which at first sight does not seem suitable, it was the owner’s desire to live in an open, airy, yet intimate residential space, which stretches out and connects with the outside space to its fullest.
The ground floor contains the living part of a larger residential unit and is thus fully open, giving the users the impression that it is covering all the available plot area. The circumferential wall of the plot that stops our view from the inside is raised above the eyes of the passers-by and prevents the insight from outside. Simultaneously, all the required service functions are embedded in the thickened wall (entrance, toilets, stairs, garbage, garden arbor… ) and are, when using the open plan of the house, completely undetectable and do constitute additional barriers. Circumferential wall in combination with the communication core represent also the basic structural frame and support the entire floors’ program, which consequently requires no additional support on the ground floor. Removal of all support elements evokes a feeling of the building mass floating in space. Thus, the closed part with sleeping areas becomes a roof over living in an open space in constant contact with nature.
The volume of the upper two floors floats just over two meters above the surrounding terrain, giving enough light to the roofed terraces. The interior of the living space opens up upwards and the ceiling mounts to three, sometimes up to six meters in height. A rather low transition between the outer and inner space and the wooden paneling of the empty spaces above the residential areas, gives the feeling of warmth and safe refuge in spite of ultimate openness and integration of the living spaces with the outside.
The two upper floors are sealed with perforated and ornamented panels, which at the same time provide shading of the building and preventing passers-by to see the interior. The selected size of the pattern, when viewed from afar, is drawn as a decorative wall and acts as a visual barrier, but when given a closer look, your view smoothly passes through the panel. With normal use of the building, panels can be closed at all times.
Architect: Enota Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia Project team: Dean Lah, Milan Tomac, Anna Kravcova, Nuša Završnik, Nebojša Vertovšek, Polona Ruparčič, Tomi Maslovarić, Maruša Zupančič Size: 610 M2 Year: 2009
