PARTY HOUSE

RD TRENČÍN _ Opatová – GRADÁCIA PRIESTORU

The assignment for a family house in Trencin is a proposal that we worked hard on. Challenging confined conditions, narrow plot, steep terrain elevation, small spacing distances of surrounding objects, or standards for screening/shading, regulatory plan and others. At the same time, meeting the investor's vision of lifelong living. All these and many other parameters, standards, ordinances, requirements and financial possibilities must be taken into account by the architect when creating an "ordinary family house", although it often happens that the evaluation of the work by the non-expert public may sound like: "Such a box? What did they design on it?" etc. Designing a fully functional minimalist house that responds to its surroundings is very difficult and its outward simplicity can be very deceptive without a detailed study of the concept. From the street, the house reveals little about itself. Practically, only the main entrance and the garage are directly visible. A similar principle was already used in 1928 on the Villa Tugendhat in Brno by the famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The whole action takes place in orientation to the garden and the stream bordering the property. Here a two-storey tapering mass is revealed. The odd-shaped plan of the building allows the mass to be occupied in a fully functional way by the living rooms required by the investor, while at the same time providing daylight to all of them. At the same time, as seen from the garden, the trapezoidal line in contact with the ground highlights the natural slope of the site, which would be suppressed and unreadable with perpendicular walls. nSo here we have a two-dimensional, one-storey perception of the building from the street, a two-storey trapezoidal perception from the garden, while still maintaining an external simplicity with a logical, alternating pattern of windows and solid surfaces. Conversely, the interior and its spatial arrangement is the opposite of the exterior, which feels unexpected when going inside. The building is spatially very playful. After passing through the vestibule, it offers us two possibilities. Either a direct staircase to descend through each level of the kitchen and dining room to the living room open across the entire height of the house. This living area is dominated by a striking double-sided fireplace. Here the visitor will clearly understand that the concept of the house is based on a clear GRADATION of spaces.The second part carries you through a long service pavilion to individual rooms overlooking the staircase. The pavilion flows into a study communicating with the whole house overlooking the garden or gallery living area. The curvilinear shape is clearly transcribed into the individual spaces, but the layout of the spaces is easily arranged. Externally, the graded space is not visible. The façade retains its charisma in its simplicity. The support of the two "worlds" is also material. The external simplicity is encased in natural, local sandstone. The internal spatial variety and playfulness is created by precast concrete view panels. Both materials support the sculptural character of the house.

Location: Trenčín -Opatová Architects: Jíří Mach, Peter Paľko