An irregularly shaped plot of land is usually seen as an obstacle that impedes the design process, often imposing the form of planned buildings. However, it turns out that unfavorable terrain conditions can be an inspiration for the unconventional form of a new building. Such a twist happened at Taneczna Street in Warsaw, where the Spleciony House, designed by Magdalena Morelewska and Anna Wojcieszek of the Morelewska Wojcieszek Architektki studio, was built.
The Taneczna Street area in Warsaw's Ursynów district is a charming neighborhood. Grabów, within which it is located, was still a separate village until the early 1950s, established by a Warsaw vetch from the Grabowski family. The official set aside land on the edge of the villages of Imielin and Wyczółki, establishing a new settlement, which in the nineteenth century had its own mill and blacksmith shop. As early as 1951, however, Grabów found itself within the borders of Warsaw, whose administration "absorbed" the surrounding villages. The area, which until then had been covered with stretches of arable fields, fundamentally changed its functions in the 1980s - a large part of the plots were developed by the Inter-Union Housing Cooperative "Grabów". In two stages, along Taneczna Street, 240 multi-story terraced houses were built, designed first by Zbigniew Pank and Andrzej Wolski, and later by Krystyna Szedny. In addition to the houses, a shopping pavilion was built in the area, and earlier there was also an elementary school.
Braided House in Warsaw
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © Morelewska Wojcieszek Architektki
Modernist cubicles among terraced houses
At the turn of the millennium, the vicinity of the "Grabów" housing estate began to fill with single-family houses - which is hardly surprising, since cheap land and the green, suburban surroundings with the Grabowski pond and the nearby greenery of Imielin seemed at the time an attractive alternative to living in the crowded city center. Development on Taneczna Street was thickening, but one plot of land remained untouched - an out-of-shape, trapezoidal parcel of land at the intersection of Taneczna and Lambada was still unused. This changed in 2022, when the construction of Dom Spleciony according to a design by Magdalena Morelewska and Anna Wojciaszek began, which optimally developed the unfavorable layout of the site.
The Braided House in Warsaw
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © Morelewska Wojcieszek Architektki
Asymmetrical semi-detached house in Grabow district
The Spleciony House is a three-story building, offering residents and residents 525 meters of usable space, divided into two units of approximately 246 and 267 square meters, respectively. The building is basically an ensemble of several cascading, cuboidal blocks that utilize the possibilities of the narrow plot, which is 16 meters wide at most, to the maximum.
The Braided House in Warsaw
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © Morelewska Wojcieszek Architektki
Two entrances to the property were organized on the eastern side, at Taneczna Street. This is where the massing of the building is most massive, harmonizing with the intensive terraced housing that is located on the other side of the road. To the west, along Lambada Street, as intended by the architects, the building seems to blur - the height of the floors is limited to two, and the mass begins to be preceded by pergolas made of light wood.
The Braided House in Warsaw
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © Morelewska Wojcieszek Architektki
Functionally from top to bottom
In both dwellings, the functional division of usable spaces was carried out taking into account the individual floors. The first floor included "living" rooms - living room, kitchen with dining room, bathroom and dressing room. On the second floor were placed three pairs of dressing room-bedroom, one of which was also conceived as a work room. The top floor, realized in the form of a cuboid pavilion, sited on the eastern side of the main body of the building, is designed for almost 40-square-meter recreational space in the form of open space, which can be further reorganized, enriching the house with an additional two bedrooms. The interiors of the top floors are illuminated by large glazings, occupying almost the entire area of the west wall.
The Braided House in Warsaw
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © Morelewska Wojcieszek Architektki
white, glass and wood
Finishing plays an important role in the Braided House. The aesthetic expression of the facade is built up by three materials - snow-white plaster, which is used to cover most of the wall slopes, large glazings, located mainly on the south and west sides, and wood. The light-colored, natural material was primarily used to construct the pergolas, as well as the terraces located under the pergolas. Wooden cladding also appeared on the corners of the perpendiculars forming the body of the building.
The Braided House in Warsaw
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © Morelewska Wojcieszek Architektki
a pinch of privacy
A big problem during the design of the Braided House on Taneczna Street could have been to ensure adequate privacy for those living in the building. The issue was solved in two ways - on the north side, where the building is adjacent to other buildings, the amount of glazing was reduced to a minimum. The south side was developed more interestingly. Here the architects resigned from a continuous fence in favor of a low, shrub-planted slope, with concrete walls growing only in places. As a result, on a small plot of less than 800 meters there is room for everything needed for comfortable living - ample living spaces filled with light streaming in through large windows, a bit of greenery and an appropriate dose of privacy. And all this on an out-of-shape, trapezoidal plot!
