Children's imagination
Working on this project was a great experience for us. After the construction of the house there were some elevation boards left and the investors commissioned us to design a so called "tree house" for a little girl named Maja. for a little girl called Maja. Unfortunately, no tree on the plot was suitable for this purpose. The only suitable place turned out to be the top of an earth embankment that had been created at the edge of the garden during construction. As architects, we obviously tried to educate our little 'investor' and convince her that a nice house is a house with a flat roof. But the six-year-old girl's ideas about the form of the house were archetypal: each time she drew it with a chimney, a window and a large slanting roof (as we know, only children of architects draw houses with flat roofs from an early age, thanks to their parents or perhaps because of them).
Rudin House -> Mai House
Without giving up on education, we started looking for a compromise. After long discussions, we decided to give Mai a copy of the most recognisable contemporary house with an archetypal form, the Rudin House designed by Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron.
Cottage
You could say that it is almost a plagiarism of this well-known building. Almost, because it has almost its form, almost its divisions and is built with completely different materials. The only thing we focused on when designing it was ventilation. The floor of the cottage is openwork, all the light elements open up, and the chimneys are not for decoration but to ventilate the interior.
Photos: Łukasz Zandecki / Mariusz Jagniweski
