exexe: ekosystem

winter view

the project called ‘ekosystem’ got one of four equal prizes in architectural competition organized by murator – one of the biggest architectural publisher in poland. the task was to design an eco-friendly and energy efficient, freestanding house, for a family of four, with an area between 150 and 200 square meters (excluding a garage). the strength of our proposal was its simplicity, and ecological character of the space itself. we created family friendly building, with living room placed at the same centre, a ring of rooms placed around it. there are no corridors or other communication areas.

here is an extract from the project description:

as the awareness of the architecture’s impact on the environment is growing, people search more and more for new solutions of living. our proposal is adressed to open minded, ready for changes and not afraid of experimentation ones. designing the eco-architecture starts at the very begining of the project design, in the space creating phase. conscious and intelligent design decissions, conformed to the general vision of an eco-friendly building results with solutions that have essential influence on the living-space quality as well as ecological essence of the house/building itself. however, the technical solutions suitable for a house, chosen on the cutting edge of the contemporary tendencies, and with respect to the client’s budget, emphasize the architecture’s aspiration to become fully autonomous.

instead designing one defined and unchangable house we proposed a system that is open for multiple solutions and possibilities. the most important feature of this house is the logic of the plan that comes out of centrally situated polygonal living room. this space is surrounded by arranged additional rooms (e.g. master bedroom, children’s room, dining,etc), that are set accordingly to user’s needs and fit the plot location and geographical position. each room has the same wide, equal to polygon’s edge that is 340 cm wide. triangular spaces between the rooms are tightly inserted and serve the role of the additional multifunctional spaces as well as the filling of the space around the living-room. to create the passage from cental part of the house to the ouside, the ring of rooms can be interrupted by creating the terrace or winter garden (preferably on the south-west side of the house). each room in the ouside ring is appointed with the sliding closing-system that can be hidden in the triangular spaces. thanks to that,the house completely open during a day, can shrink and gather all house-members in the smaller central part in the evening. the essence of this solution is pro-family and open characteristic of the interiors. centrally oriented arrangement of space gives constant feeling of being close with your familly with the possibility of isolating any part of the house if needed. the space of the house enhances and intensifies relations between the loved-ones. therefore, bungalow seems to be the best solution for this type of space what also brings another advatage as it can be easily accessed by disabled. centrally focused space gives also constant contact with the surrounding. by opening all sliding walls in the central living-room, wide (260°) view on the garden is created.

the arrangement presented here along with pro-social and experimental character of the interiors, offers many rational and passive solutions conected with materials and spaces that could be used. the set of active ecologically-friendly solutions included in this project gives the house huge autonomy what along with passive solutions minimizes its’ negative influence on the surroundings.

interior winter view