From the architect. The outlined single family house is situated on the picturesque outskirts of Slovenian capital Ljubljana, surrounded by low hill countryside. The house interior is designed for a family of intellectuals with a small child who sought refuge from the everyday hustle and bustle of the city, yet still with all the benefits of urban development located nearby.
The clients desired to experience a combination of contemporary living within a more traditional environment and wished to translate this formal tension between the interior and the exterior into the design. The principal requirements were related to the combined spaces of the living room, dining room and kitchen.
The requirements for the living room was to be multifunctional, spacious and offering various options to spend family time. Because of unusually long yet broad layout of the living room, our initial idea was based on the distribution of all the required services along the longitudinal wall of the living room thus allowing custom usage of its capacities while leaving most of the remaining space free for other non-functional types of activities.
We designed this spatial element as unobtrusive as possible. With the minimal design it visually substitutes the clear white supporting wall, with only seemingly randomly placed niches as indicator of architectural intervention.
Oak is the predominant wood material used in the design, selected because of the nearby location of outstanding oak forests. Its combination with an almost sterile white color creates this visual tension between urban and traditional that the clients desired.
