A single-family house in Burow was awarded first place in the residential architecture category in 2010 in the 5th edition of the competition for the Stanislaw Witkiewicz Małopolski Voivodeship Award. Below we recall the winning project by the WIZJA architectural office.
The main idea behind the concept of the house was an attempt to interpret the traditional regional form, characteristic of the Jurassic Park zone, and transform it into contemporary language. The zoning decision imposed many restrictions on the architects, such as the angle of the roof, the symmetry of the roof slopes, the height of the eaves, cornice and ridge.
The wooden cladding of the house was made of Siberian larch
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Additional guidelines were the slope of the site and the prohibition of its transformation, as well as the limited area of the plot. As a result, a body combining two solutions was created - a compact house with a gable roof and a disjointed cub oid with a modernist shape.
House in Burow, cross-section
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synthetic form and wood
The architects, seeking to simplify the regional form, created a design in which sharp edges define the geometry and proportions of the building. To preserve the synthetic form, the authors hid the gutters in the roof slopes, and placed the downpipes in layers of insulation under the wood cladding. Architectural detailing was limited to a single material - profiled slats and boards of Siberian larch, which are the basic finish of the walls and roof. The profiled slats cover the main part of the house in a vertical arrangement. Extending beyond the body of the form in the first floor, they form the base of the attic terraces. The boards, arranged horizontally, emphasize the horizontal layout of the block and optically lengthen it. Wooden cladding connects the individual parts of the house, inscribing it into the surrounding landscape.
A panoramic window is placed in the living room
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panoramic view
The bounding of the terrain slopes was done in raw concrete, and steel handrails were added to the low wooden balustrades of the terraces. The fine divisions in the traditional window and door openings, were replaced with large panes of glass. The largest panoramic window, measuring 320×450 cm, located in the living room, faces Balice Airport. This allows observation of planes taking off and landing. Interestingly, the sheet of glass from which the window was made weighs 800 kg, and its transportation and installation posed quite a design challenge.
compiled by Dobrawa Bies
illustrations courtesy of the architectural bureau WIZJA
