When living in the center seems too expensive, architects from the jojko+nawrocki studio present an affordable alternative. The house they designed in Katowice's Ochojec was awarded an honorable mention in the Single-Family House category of the Architecture of the Year of the Silesian Voivodeship 2024 competition.
Housing prices in the centers of large metropolises are constantly rising. And although, according to statistics, Katowice is one of the cities where the price of a square meter of a new apartment still hovers around PLN 10,000, there is still a significant number of Katowice families who cannot afford their own place, especially if more space is needed. For many families, the alternative becomes moving to neighborhoods far from the center. One such story sparked a project in which minimalism is more than an aesthetic choice.
A house in Ochojiec
Photo: Michał Jędrzejowski © jojko+nawrocki
polish cube anew
The task was difficult, although the problem posed to architects is a common one in Poland:
Unfortunately, the city's continued sprawl into the surrounding suburbs means that within its central districts there is a lack of investment and new housing stock for larger families, and large units on the secondary market were practically out of the price range of the average family. However, it turned out that a small parcel of land of less than 400m2, found by chance, would make it possible to meet the basic requirements of future residents to create a modest and functional living space, enriched with a small garden, necessary parking spaces and an additional outbuilding. Meanwhile, in addition, the planned construction of a new streetcar line in the near vicinity will further improve quick access to schools in the city center.
- write the architects.
House in Ochojiec
Photo: Michal Jędrzejowski © jojko+nawrocki
The resulting solution has a dose of universalism:
The surrounding area of the plot is a neighborhood largely built of typical "cubes" from the communist period, so the development conditions include parameters that are a continuation of this development. The neighborhood includes almost exclusively 2-story buildings with flat roofs.
- Bartek Nawrocki explains.
Many other suburban neighborhoods or villages in our country can be described in a similar way. The architects from jojko+nawrocki took an archetypal concept for the architectural landscape of Poland, improved it and brought it into the 21st century.
A house in Ochojiec
Photo: Michal Jedrzejowski © jojko+nawrocki
sincere architecture
The house in Ochojec is a two-story cube with a trapezoidal base, covered with a flat roof. A living area with a kitchen, living room, bathroom and utility rooms was located on the first floor, while bedrooms and a second bathroom are located upstairs. At the back of the house is located a small, wood-lined terrace, and next to it is an additional outbuilding, aesthetically related to the main volume on the plot. The development site, although rather small, turned out to be very favorable in terms of optimal use of space.
A house in Ochojiec
Photo: Michał Jędrzejowski © jojko+nawrocki
The Katowice realization by jojko+nawrocki is an architecture that has nothing to hide. The dark gray facade reveals what material the building was made of - the choice was hollow blocks imported from nearby Sierakowice. Prefabricated concrete ceilings were built even closer, as these were brought from Katowice itself. Minimalism and economy of the solutions used are a necessity in this realization, but also aesthetics. As the architects emphasize, the choice of local materials also has a pro-environmental dimension.
House in Ochojiec
Photo: Michał Jędrzejowski © jojko+nawrocki
window kaleidoscope
An important means of expression used by the architects is the way the windows are arranged. In addition to its functional dimension, thanks to which all rooms in the house are adequately illuminated, the seemingly chaotic windows scattered across the facade create an interesting composition, breaking the symmetry and formal minimalism of the realization. In addition to the irregular distribution, the window openings also differ in format - they are rectangles of different dimensions, although scaled while maintaining the same ratio of side lengths. The case is similar for window divisions. They are not present in all openings, but in places where it was decided to introduce them, the same aspect ratio was maintained.
House in Ochojiec
Photo: Michal Jędrzejowski © jojko+nawrocki
This is, by the way, not the first house where jojko+nawrocki decided on non-standard window solutions. Another project, also appreciated in competitions, was the House in Podles near the southern borders of Katowice. There the architects organized the facade by juxtaposing the triangular outline of the gabled roof with asymmetrically arranged square windows.
The house in Ochojiec
Photo: Michal Jędrzejowski © jojko+nawrocki
dark on the outside, light on the inside
The graphite cube house in Ochojec hides a bright and warm interior. Most of the first floor is occupied by a single-space living area, which combines a spacious living room with a kitchen. Thanks to three large window openings facing the courtyard at the back of the house, plenty of light flows into the spacious interior. Like the facades, the interior walls have nothing to hide in terms of the materials used to construct the house - the lack of a thick layer of plaster and the use of white paint highlight the drawing of the hollow blocks used to construct the building.
House in Ochojiec
Photo: Michal Jędrzejowski © jojko+nawrocki
Sunlight enters the staircase, finished in light-colored plywood, through a sizable square skylight. Like everything else in the house, its wooden setting is austere and spare. Like everything in this house, it is also beautiful in its simplicity.
