Suburban house

28 of September '23

Suburban house | proj.: Z3Z Architects

Photo: Marcin Mularczyk © Z3Z Architects

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Article taken from A&B issue 7-8|23

Beauty, goodness, sustainability - are these values still relevant?

What are the biggest design challenges of single-family home architecture today?

Suburban house | proj.: Z3Z Architects

Photo: Marcin Mularczyk © Z3Z Architects

Beauty, goodness and permanence are universal values that are still relevant in the architecture of single-family houses even now. In particular, durability in Polish houses was and is a strong criterion for the selection of solutions. Brick houses reign supreme in our country, and we are very slowly converting to other technologies. Wood, both in construction and other elements, is still underestimated precisely because of concerns about its durability, often wrongly.

Suburban house | proj.: Z3Z Architects

photo: Marcin Mularczyk © Z3Z Architekci

However, the understanding of the concepts of beauty and goodness is changing faster. Over the past decades, Poles have significantly changed their opinion on what kind of home can be considered beautiful, and now it is much more like the beauty taught by architectural colleges. Simply put - the taste of Poles has improved, at least in the architect's sense. The fashion for palaces, mansions and castles has passed. Young architects taught at college the ethics of the profession, what to design and what not to design, no longer have to hide the ideals brought from college in their pockets at the start when they get to the studio designing houses. It can be seen that current fashions have much more in common with good contemporary architecture than they used to. This phenomenon should definitely be considered positive, but it is worth noting that they continue to be certain fads. Buildings that happen to be fashionable do not necessarily fit in every landscape and every plot of land. A good example is one of the newer trends, the fashion of black barns, inspired by good architecture, on top of that quite simple to create more interesting buildings.

Suburban house | proj.: Z3Z Architects

In terms of the ethics of the profession, architects designing single-family homes are in a much better position today than they were two decades ago. The design challenge today is not to succumb to fads. Of course, this will never be fully possible, since many investors come to the studio precisely for a fashionable house. We even meet investors' opinion that a particular facade solution was fashionable four years ago, and now something else is fashionable. The challenge is to nevertheless be guided by the idea that architecture should, above all, be timeless and beautiful for decades, not necessarily fashionable.