It's safe to say that Poznan-based {tag:pracownie} - Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon and Bartłomiej Bajon with their team - have cut their teeth on single-family house projects. The Association of Polish Architects recognized their projects as the best in Poland two years in a row (in 2020 and 2021), and last year the chapter of the Architectural Award of the Wielkopolska Region awarded the Multifamily House - the hero of our conversation - appreciating in the object "a breath of freshness and unconventionality close to experimentation." I talk about the house in question and the situation on the market for single-family houses with a duo of architects from Poznań.
Katarzyna CYNKA-BAJON - a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Poznan University of Technology, in 2004-2005 she was on scholarship at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Hanover in Germany. Founder and chief architect at PL.architekci studio, member of the Greater Poland Chamber of Architects, Association of Polish Architects and Association of Interior Designers.
Bartłomiej BAJON - graduate of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Poznan University of Technology. Founder and chief architect of PL.architekci studio. Member of the Greater Poland Chamber of Architects, the Association of Polish Architects and the Association of Interior Designers.
OlaKloc: You have a lot of experience in single-family house projects, the oldest one I found on the studio's website is from 2009.
Bartłomiej Bajon: We actually started designing houses in our fourth year of college (2004) - the first client was my brother and his wife. Although it is said that you don't design houses for your family, and the first one at that, I think they were such our patrons: they allowed a beginner and inexperienced, but full of ambition and ideas designer to realize a house. They trusted us and entrusted us with the important thing of designing and building a house. And it was a house that was unusual for those times, that is, very simple in form.
We already had our first trips abroad, a strongly defined vision of very frugal houses - minimalist, refined architecture. Something like this was not on the market then, or was very niche. So we decided, together with a friend, to design them a house as a wedding gift. And as a result, just two years after graduation, we had a completed building that allowed us to attract more clients. Practically every week we came with someone else so that they could see the house and trust us. It was a bit like a meeting in a museum, we kept talking about the same thing. And it was really solutions that were unheard of in Poland at the time, like facing plinths, floor-to-ceiling doors and windows, very minimalist buildings. This house also had a lot of publications in the press and on the Internet.
So our first clients were people from my brother's generation, i.e. the first vintages of graduates of the capitalist economy - people of "success in the business world" with great awareness and expectations, who already wanted a different architecture than was previously found in Poland, i.e. typical, catalog houses. And so it happened that actually, without any specific plan, we began to be very strongly identified with individual projects - one began to recommend us to another. But it certainly wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the first realization, and this is always a problem for a young studio.
Multifamily House won the NAWW 2023 Architecture Award of the Wielkopolska Region in the category "Single-Family House".
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © PL.architekci
Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon: The first commissions of young architects are usually houses. I think this is one of the most difficult design fields, because in order to design a house well, one should already live in one, have a family and so on. And a young student usually does not have a family, lives in some small apartment, so it is difficult for him sometimes even to imagine how a house functions. So a paradox emerges - you start with designing houses, without knowing how to live in them yet, without knowing how they function.
Ola Kloc: So how do you approach your first project without this experience?
Bartłomiej Bajon: A lot depends on sensitivity, analyzing. In the architectural profession you constantly have to observe something, analyze it and draw conclusions from it. A friend of ours laughs that when we go on vacation with them, I even analyze the connections of the tiles in the sidewalk. And this approach at home comes precisely from this observing the world, analyzing and reading. When we started there was no internet yet, books were the source of knowledge, we analyzed building plans. Today there is access to everything, and I have the impression - looking at what portfolios we get from students - that thinking about the space of the house is missing. I always say that in a house you live inside, not outside. A house needs to be designed from the inside, not from what the exterior looks like, because then the middle is non-functional. In the students' works this can be seen - kitchens that are too small, mini islands, sofas that are out of proportion, lack of knowledge of the market, the fact that the sofa is not 80 centimeters deep, but 100-110, which shows how much space it takes up in the house. Creating "deserts", or spaces of 10 meters for nothing. And to build such a square meter with interiors ranges from 10 to 15 thousand - this amount times 10 meters of "nothing" gives 150 thousand thrown down the drain! You have to think about investors' money all the time.
We hate wasting space, every space must be justified with us. It's best if someone already at the university notices and analyzes this, or hits the right and wise instructor. Kasia and I hit upon one person during those five years of study who taught us to think about architecture, showed us that it must be consistent, that there are no coincidences, that one line entails another, that there is no room for wasting space.
The dream of the investors was that their house on a wooded plot would be very well lit; this desire was determined by the dismemberment of the solid
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © PL.architekci
Ola Kloc: Especially since the construction of a house often consumes most of the investor's savings.
Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon: Yes. We have a lot of houses with bigger budgets, but we also have clients with a "normal" budget of a small house, 150-200 meters - they know that we will design the optimal space for them, that we have experience and we don't do unnecessary embellishments that don't give anything in life, but only cost money. We take a practical approach to design.
Ola Kloc: How has the market for single-family homes changed over these twenty years?
Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon: The awareness has changed. Poles began to travel the world and notice that it is possible to do things differently. And we, young designers, wanted to match Western models, but at the same time the cultural identity of the place where we live was important to us. When we started designing, there were no modern houses at all - you bought ready-made houses, which were redesigned with an architect. Few people opted for individual designs, even when they were created individually, they continued to look like typical "Murator" houses.
Investors also often don't have time to take care of construction or come up with interiors. They prefer to pay and get a ready-made product sewn to measure. Fortunately, the times are passing that the Pole is on his own for everything.
The dismemberment of the body of the house was a formal procedure - thanks to this it does not dominate the surroundings
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © PL.architekci
Ola Kloc: But at the same time, last year the number of single-family house construction starts was the lowest in years.
Bartłomiej Bajon: Yes, but this is more due to the economic situation in the world - the problems of war, covidium, difficulties with the availability of credit. There is no denying that the cost of building a house is now very high. Average people cannot afford to build. We have clients who give loans mainly to young and not at all low-earning people for the Poznan market - these people can't afford to buy an apartment of 40, 50 square meters, because the cost of credit and living is so high. So unfortunately it's like this - those who have money build all the time, but the vast majority of average people - don't. There's no denying that we mostly build houses for a more affluent group of customers. There are also people with smaller budgets, who know that although they will spend more on a project, we will fit it better to their needs and the budget they have. However, many people are surprised by the price for the project.
Ola Kloc: It's not surprising, given how much choice there is in catalog or typical houses.
Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon: Yes, it is shocking! There were recently loud debates in architectural forums after a text in "Wyborcza" about a tiler [the text in question is Bartosz Jozefiak's "Profession: architect. "The gentleman who lays tiles is more respected" published in Duży Format on May 6 this year. - Editor's note] - and this is sad. Unfortunately, creative professions are not appreciated in Poland, and the profession of architecture is one of them. The executive branch (tile setters, carpenters) is better paid than those who take responsibility for the entire investment process. This is unimaginable, we get quotes from contractors and rub our eyes in amazement - three weeks of work by a tiler, and a quote of 60 thousand zlotys for labor.
Independent modules of the house over time - if necessary - will be able to be taken out of use
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © PL.architekci
Bartlomiej Bajon: My friend and I began to wonder what it was that this tiler would be paid by the investor, and in conversation with the architect he says: "Oh Jesus, so much money for a project! Our services are soft, with an interior design you often hear that "after all, it's just a color choice". - the investor can also choose the color for himself, "it's only a choice of tile, a choice of sofa," and here, however, is the laying of the tile, an activity that the investor does not know how to do, so he thinks it must cost money. This is a perennial problem, our profession is always somehow undervalued.
Ola Kloc: What are your clients looking for today? What do you most often advise them against?
Bartłomiej Bajon: We are already in the privileged position that when a client comes in, he has a lot of trust in us. We spend a lot of time at the beginning having loose conversations to pick out investors. An architect in working with an individual client must first of all listen carefully and be a good psychologist. To sense how they are, how they function, what they like - to be able to build a picture of their home and enter their world. With us, there is no list of questions where, like an Excel table, the client ticks this, this and this for us. I like to start with a relaxed three-hour meeting, talking about various topics, then we often go to the plot of land and there an idea is formed in my head of what this house should look like. Of course, we outline or research whether we are going for a barn house or extreme minimalism.
Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon: We talk a lot about the interiors right away, there are no questions about how this building should look just whether they only need one oven or two, we advise them on how to approach home furnishings ergonomically. We ask if they are messy by nature, if so, this kitchen is better in some way overshadowed from the living area and so on. So that they can live well in this house. After these discussions, the client waits ten weeks or so. Then we show him the full concept of the house with a projection, visualizations from the outside and inside, because we think that this is the only way to sell the whole idea, to get a feel for what the house looks like from the inside. Of course, they are sketchy, from SketchUp. In 95 percent of cases, after this presentation, we make only cosmetic changes, because the client sees that this space is designed perfectly for him. Of course, we are happy with this confidence, it certainly gives a lot to have so many realizations of houses and their photos.
projections
© PL.architekci
Ola Kloc: What did it look like in the case of the Multifamily House? In a large space - 580 square meters - the investors wanted to include, among other things, a pickle kitchen.
Bartholomew Bajon: Yes! They told us that they had a beautiful forest plot. When we went to inspect it, a problem arose - they wanted a large house, but since they love the sun, it was also to be very well lit. Here was the quandary - how to light the house on this wooded plot? Another issue was that they have a great deal of family heirlooms: paintings, furniture, even a box window from an old family home. There were really a lot of them, and from different eras, incompatible with each other. They wanted us to find a place for them, even though the house was to be very modern. So from the beginning, when designing, we looked for places for these objects, we didn't want to present them in a museum-like way, but to use them in a modern way (unfortunately, we couldn't do the session in the interiors). For example, from the aforementioned box window - huge, probably 2.5 meters high, arched - the investor wanted to make an illuminated showcase. We convinced her that it would be a bit kitschy, and came up with the idea that we would design an alcove opposite the entrance to the house, in which we would put this restored window like a sculpture on the floor. In its box is placed a photo from the old house, illuminated by a narrow spotlight. Anyone who walks inside enters history - he sees this window, learns the context of this house, leavens it, sees the continuity of the family. There is a story behind each of our houses. It was the same with this pickle. In the basement on one side is the vineyard and on the other the kitchen for pickling, the investors did not want to have these functions upstairs in the living room only tucked away downstairs. That's where the building came from: not only because such a solution lies better in the forest layout, but also because when the investors talked about the functional program and the fact that each child was to have his own small dressing room and bathroom, that they wanted to have bedrooms close to each other, but somehow isolated, it started to form blocks for us. In such loose sentences you need to capture the spirit of the family and the house, which will allow you to create a concept.
axonometry
© PL.architekci
Ola Kloc: These disjointed blocks are basically five small houses. Please tell us more about the process of arriving at this form.
Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon: On the one hand, it was a formal solution, so that the solid wouldn't be dominant - putting up a cuboid block would mean that we wouldn't illuminate the interiors, and as we dismember it, we better illuminate each zone. It also spreads out better in relation to parts of the world. In addition, we cut each of the slanted roofs and put skylights on them, so that the sun all day long illuminates each section. The investors have three children, when they leave the house over time, these independent modules will be able to be slowly taken out of operation in terms of heating, lowering the temperature. This is also the long-term thinking that justifies this disjointed layout.
Ola Kloc: Since we can't look inside, let's focus on the facade. Special concrete tiles were created for it.
Bartłomiej Bajon: Initially we planned to use a different tile - Petersen tile in a ventilated layout, and the whole project was done under that. The construction of the house started when the covid began, then the war - the prices of everything went up. When it came to pricing the facade, the investor decided he wouldn't spend that much money on it.
He caught me off guard by saying that, after all, the most important thing is the inside of the house, not what's on the outside, because you live in a house. So you have to be careful what you say! But we didn't let go, the skin of the building is very important, and we asked Milke, a manufacturer of concrete tiles, if it would be possible to make such a scalloped facade. They made us material samples and it turned out to be it. Of course, we had to redesign the amount of insulation a bit to make everything fit, but this way we halved the cost compared to the original facade, which of course made the investors very happy. We knew from the beginning that the building had to be clad with something, because in this forest setting the plaster would get old very quickly. They made five designs that draw from the landscape - there are imprinted mosses, tree bark, it's very connected to the environment. This fine division also visually reduces the scale of the building, it makes it more human, that you see these imperfections in the texture on the tile, it became very homely because of this.
Scale facade - a shell of a house that draws texture from the landscape
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © PL.architekci
Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon: Wealways do houses with author supervision and we like to work with people who, like us, are passionate about their work. Designing is a team effort, and not just in the office, but with everyone involved in the construction process - if there's no chemistry between all of us, it won't work out. And there are always problems and they need to be solved, so we build with the same people all the time and everyone knows what to expect, which will satisfy everyone. And although it's tiring, it's also enjoyable, such an adventure each time.
Ola Kloc: The competition committee of last year's Architectural Award of the Wielkopolska Voivodeship, in the justification of the nomination in the House category, in which the Multifamily House won the award, emphasized the exclusivity and elitism of the competition's realizations, the use of only classical technologies in them, which gives the impression of detaching architecture from the main problems we face today. What do you think about this?
Bartłomiej Bajon: There's no denying it - this house, or many others we design, is inaccessible to most, it's a bit elitist. That leaves the ordinary consumer - rising costs mean they can't afford to build a house. There are also all the EU directives coming in, i.e. decarbonization - it's impossible for a person building a modest house, where every element is very important and expensive, to spend 30 thousand on a heat pump when he can have a gas furnace for 5 thousand. After a while, in general, construction, owning a house or apartment will be elitist. This can be seen not only in large centers, where the price per square meter is high, but even in the small ones. In the vicinity of Poznań, in towns with 15, 20 thousand inhabitants, the price of a square meter reaches 9, 10 thousand zlotys. I wonder who will buy it.
Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon: The cost of building to developer condition in such the simplest "catalog" house already reaches about 4 thousand zlotys per square meter, with large windows and mechanical ventilation you have to count close to 7 thousand, less will not come out, even though there are no fireworks there yet. Multiplying this times the whole meterage, it turns out that today there is no chance to build a house for less than a million. Even in such a 100-meter house, the basic finishing will be around 200, 250 thousand. So I would say that all construction is elitist.
elevations and cross-section
© PL.architekci
Ola Kloc: This means that fewer and fewer people will be able to afford it and owning a house will become an even greater luxury.
Bartłomiej Bajon: That's exactly right. County or city offices issue a lot of permits for building houses, so maybe those who can't afford to buy an apartment in the city are trying to build that little house of theirs further away from the city, where the land is cheaper. Unfortunately, this is also a vicious circle, because working in the city and commuting those 20, 30 kilometers every day wastes a lot of time, fuel and money.
Most of the houses we do are elite. I don't want to say that unfortunately, because we like what we do, but it's sad at the same time that we have come to such high prices. The pandemic and the war caused prices to go up a lot, and although we came down a bit from that peak afterwards, everything is still much more expensive and fewer and fewer people can afford to build.
Ola Kloc: It's hard to make an optimistic conclusion in this situation, but let's try - is there a chance for a better future for single-family house projects, for them to become more accessible?
Katarzyna Cynka-Bajon: I think that if this level of prices, services (I'm not talking about design) and construction costs continues, I think not. It will become even more elitist, unfortunately. There will be no more houses built by the economic method, because even such an average Kowalski will not be able to afford. Just as Bartek mentioned, the requirements for low-emission buildings mean that the house must be "infused" with the installation that will make this possible.
In the West, most people rent apartments, but again, if the rental market is owned by investment funds or companies buying properties typically for rent, they dictate prices and make apartments unaffordable for most people. Just whether any top-down regulations can change this? That's what I don't know.
Ola Kloc: Thank you for the interview.
interviewed: Ola Kloc
Photo: Piotr Krajewski © PL.architekci
more: A&B 7-8/2024 - SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSES,
download free e-publications of A&B
