The shingle and concrete villa in Libertow near Krakow was awarded first place in 2012 in the residential architecture category in the 6th edition of the Stanislaw Witkiewicz Małopolski Voivodeship Award competition. Below we recall the winning project by the Barycz and Saramowicz Architectural Office.
The villa made of architectural concrete and cedar dranica in Libertow was appreciated by the competition jury for its creative search for a contemporary form of residential house architecture with an attempt to refer to representative features of regional buildings.
The villa is two intermingling masses
© Biuro Architektoniczne Barycz i Saramowicz
two masses
The building was composed of two perpendicularly aligned, interpenetrating masses. One of them is a traditional form in a contemporary version - in the shape of a house with a gabled roof. The other, lower, is a modernist flat pavilion. The specific layout of the building, additionally deprived of window openings on one side, allowed for effective isolation from the urban area and the formation of an intimate garden, as well as framing views of the Krakow skyline.
elevation from the garden side
© Biuro Architektoniczne Barycz i Saramowicz
The duality of the villa's spatial composition is reflected in its functional zones. In the modernist pavilion, a single-space living zone was planned linearly, combining comfort with representativeness. The zone includes a kitchen with a separate pantry, a dining room with a sideboard, and a living room with a fireplace. Minotti Cuccine furnishings, Murano glass lamps and a collection of Young Poland paintings complete the synthesized image of the whole. Along the length of the building, a wooden terrace has been placed, providing an expansive view of Cracow. The first floor of the front body of the building includes an entrance hall, a study with the possibility of using it as a guest area, a small recreation area, and a separate media room with a home theater. Further on, a technical, utility and garage area is planned. The first floor is a private zone - the part intended for parents includes a bedroom, a pass-through dressing room with a dressing table and a bath room. A child's private zone is located next door, with a bedroom provided with its own bathroom and dressing room. The private rooms have partially covered terraces.
concrete and shingle facade
© Barycz and Saramowicz Architectural Office
shingle and concrete
The building 's expressive facade is composed of two materials: facing concrete and pinched sh ingles - for which Canadian cedar was imported. The same type of covering was used on the steeply pitched roof crowning the villa's front pavilion. The natural imprint of the shuttering boards, on the other hand, is an intentional treatment - in this way two materials are intertwined; warm, dark shingles and cool, luminous architectural concrete. The wooden cladding over time is covered with a beautiful gray patina, the color of which harmonizes with the cool concrete shade. The building has no cornices or eaves, instead there are gabions filled with granite ballast and all-glass balustrades, in the role of contemporary minimalist decoration.
As the architects say about the villa in Libertow:
The shape of the building grows out of the spatial philosophy of the Barycz and Saramowicz Architectural Office and its two fundamental axioms. First, that beauty is the shape of expediency. Second, that the architecture of modern Poland in the 21st century must be avant-garde and hyper-modern, and at the same time distinct, not imitative, but drawing on its own history and tradition. For it grows out of culture and builds its identity in relation to it.
compiled by: Dobrawa Bies
illustrations courtesy of the Barycz and Saramowicz Architectural Office
