Two years ago, the site of a defunct manor house from the second half of the 19th century with preserved fragments of historic farm buildings in Chorowice (an area formerly owned by the Benedictine Abbey in Tyniec) was acquired by a married couple from Krzeszowiak. The condition of the surviving ruins allowed the owners to remove the remains of the former buildings from the register of historical monuments and build a modern villa on the hillside. However, investors found the prospect of rebuilding the monument more tempting.
The investors, by establishing contact with the property's previous owners, reached out to old Austrian maps and archival photos of the manor house with the farmstead, and learned about the fate of the manor's inhabitants. Based on the collected materials, a project for the restoration, reconstruction and expansion of the manor was created in cooperation with architects from Karpiel Steindel Architektura. The architects took a meticulous approach to combining the old with the new, to recreating the architectural detail that the investors wanted, and the approach to shaping the new function inside the buildings (including the former stable, which served as a residential space after construction).
Photo: Krystian Morawetz
As the architects explain, the biggest design challenge was to incorporate residential functions into the two, free-standing buildings of the historic stable and the piggery added to one of them in the 1970s, and to combine them into a single structure. Given the preservationist nature of the project, the recommendations were clear - the design should be shaped solely on the basis of the historic form of the buildings.
In the end, given the need to shape the living space for a multi-person family, the architects decided to preserve the piggery and transform it into a modern wing of the complex, with large glazings opening the living room to the park panorama. This solved the problems of planning the new functions inside the historic building, as well as illuminating the living room located in the former stable building. A new element of the development is also a connecting link added by the designers to unite the farm buildings.
Photo: Krystian Morawetz
In the new parts of the development, the architects decided not to refer to the historic buildings, but to clearly separate what is historic from what is modern by cladding the new elements with corten.
The consistency of the investors and the fidelity of the architects to the conservation doctrine is honored today at the entrance by a white and blue plaque with an inscription - a monument protected by law. This time, however, it is also a testimony to the struggle to save a piece of Malopolska's heritage, culture and identity of the region," writes Dawid Hajok about the realization.
